


getting me through the night

by DivineProjectZero



Series: it's a sweet life [2]
Category: Leverage
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:33:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 31,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28048521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DivineProjectZero/pseuds/DivineProjectZero
Summary: It’s been six years since they last saw each other, but it takes only a heartbeat for Eliot to know that this ishisQuinn.
Relationships: Mr. Quinn/Eliot Spencer (Leverage)
Series: it's a sweet life [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1909930
Comments: 53
Kudos: 101





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Self-betaed. All mistakes are mine. Constructive feedback is always welcome.
> 
> My biggest thanks to Key for being my cheerleader throughout this writing process, and also for regularly reminding me to hydrate and stretch.
> 
> Title is from "Flashlight" by Jessie J.

There are three things that Eliot has begrudgingly, painfully, wholeheartedly accepted and made his peace with:

One. He can never atone for what he’s done in the past. All the blood on his hands will never be entirely scrubbed away, no matter how much good he does now. 

Two. The team is his family. For better or worse, they’re his to protect now, and if taking a bullet for them is how he goes down, it’ll be worth it.

Three. Quinn was, and is, and always will be who his heart belongs to. He’s tried like hell to deny that ever since he left San Lorenzo, but no matter how many people he sleeps with, no matter how many jobs he triumphantly pulls off by himself, no matter how many times he feels warmth suffuse his chest at the thought that he has a family to call his own now—nothing compares to Quinn in Eliot’s life. Eliot’s resigned himself to the fact that he’ll always want Quinn, who gave him up. Quinn, who he’ll never see again.

Except, Nate says _we’re going after Damien Moreau_ , and everything goes to hell. 

Even as he tries his best to keep the team away from Moreau, Eliot feels the clock ticking inevitably down, because Nate is too relentless for his own good sometimes and the team wants to do the right thing too much for their own good a lot of the time. Day by day, step by step, job by job, they claw their way closer and closer until Eliot realizes with a dawning kind of despair that he might end up seeing Quinn after all.

He hates himself, just a little bit, for how the very prospect feels a little like coming home.

-

“Why are you so tense?” Hardison asks, and he doesn’t sound as half as concerned as he should be when he’s literally five minutes away from meeting one of the most dangerous men in all of Europe. But then again, Hardison hasn’t seen the things Eliot’s seen. Hasn’t been so deep in the dark that he was drowning in it, blood on his hands and screams in his head. He doesn’t know what Moreau is really capable of. Or what Eliot used to be—and still is—capable of. “C’mon, man, it’s gonna be fine.”

Eliot crosses his arms. He’s already made up his mind of how this is all going to go, even if he hasn’t shared any of it with Hardison yet. “Yeah, well. It’s Moreau. He’s got a lot up his sleeve.”

“Yeah, but we have _you_ ,” Hardison points out, and Eliot wonders what the hell he did to earn this kind of trust. Something deep in his gut twists at the thought that Hardison’s faith in him might break apart once he learns about Eliot’s history with Moreau. About the things Eliot did, back when he thought of Moreau as _Damien_ , a man that he could share laughter and drinks with.

Eliot shakes his head, muttering something inane about how he thinks this is all a terrible idea, but he starts walking with Hardison anyway, towards the guards at the elevator, and Eliot knows it’s time to face the music when the guards stop them and ask them who they are.

“I’m Eliot Spencer,” he tells them, and he’s only half-surprised that the guard’s eyes go wide in recognition at the name. Even after all this time, even with these men that Eliot’s never seen before, he’s clearly still remembered amongst Damien’s people. He doesn’t know if he should be proud or ashamed of that. 

He wonders if Quinn ever talked about him. If Quinn’s even spoken Eliot’s name since he left.

“Eliot, why did you tell them your real name?” Hardison hisses, his ridiculous accent forgotten in his confusion as they ride the elevator with the armed guards, and Eliot has to grit his teeth to stave off the urge to run. To knock the guards out and take Hardison back out of this place so that Moreau can never lay a finger on him or the rest of the team. 

It’s too late, though, and in no time at all, they’re walking by a swimming pool, stepping past man after man who starts reaching for a weapon, wide-eyed. Eliot doesn’t really recognize any of them except for Farrow, who looks intrigued as he draws a gun from a concealed holster. Eliot’s not all that surprised at how many new faces have replaced old ones. He wasn’t kidding when he told Sophie that he’d been keeping close tabs on Moreau. Ever since he left San Lorenzo, he had to make sure he never crossed paths with Moreau’s operations, so he’d kept a close eye on what was going on there.

So Eliot’s not shocked to see that most of Moreau’s inner circle has changed drastically since his departure. He’d heard through the grapevine that Kravitz retired after some kind of major injury. Many others had been killed. Funnily enough, Gideon had somehow found his way back to Mossad. And then there’d been Freeman, who died of ALS shortly before Eliot met the team, which was apparently why Moreau had handed over his accounts to be handled by the likes of Vector. In all honesty, Eliot’s pretty sure that if Freeman was still alive, the team would’ve never gotten their hands on Moreau’s accounts at all.

Then there’s Chapman, with his smug grin and calculating gaze, stepping close to greet Eliot. A dozen guns are pointed in their direction, but Eliot knows it’s just for show. None of them would dare make a move without permission.

“They gave you the job?” Eliot asks, even though he already knew about this for a while now. 

Chapman smiles wider. “There was an opening.”

“Guess you didn’t stand a chance at getting my old spot on your own,” Eliot says easily, and he relishes the way the corner of Chapman’s mouth twitches. He never worked with Chapman directly back in the day, but he hadn’t thought very highly of the man even when they’d barely interacted with each other. It was too easy to tell how power-hungry he was, and Eliot can only imagine how satisfied Chapman must be to have been promoted to Damien’s righthand man while still being frustrated that he never quite managed to take over as chief enforcer. “So how did Alonso bite the dust?”

“He got shot,” a familiar voice says, sending a shiver down Eliot’s spine. He looks to the side to the back, where Quinn steps out of the corner.

Fuck. Eliot might’ve been keeping tabs on Moreau’s dealings and men, keeping track of whether Quinn was dead or alive because he couldn’t help himself, but seeing Quinn now is a whole new revelation. His curls have grown out long enough to be tied back, his light gray suit is tailored sharply, and he’s lost any semblance of baby fat. He hasn’t exactly grown any taller, from what Eliot can tell, but he’s grown into himself, into somebody older and maybe a little colder.

And yet, Eliot’s treacherous heart recognizes him immediately. It’s been six years since they last saw each other, but it takes only a heartbeat for Eliot to know that this is _his_ Quinn. The one Eliot’s treasured ever since the day he followed Eliot back to his tiny flat in London and slept on his couch.

Even when Quinn’s expression is unreadable and blank, the part of Eliot that aches for Quinn like a missing limb is soothed just by the very sight of him. The only thing that stops Eliot from falling apart right here and now is the reminder that Hardison is here, and Eliot’s job is to protect him from everybody else here, including Quinn.

“Stand down,” Quinn says, his words terse, and every man lowers his gun and tucks it back away. Something deep in Eliot’s gut squirms in discomfort at how easily the men obey Quinn’s orders. How natural it is for Quinn to take control. He doesn’t dare to even think about how much blood Quinn must have dipped his hands into to solidify his position as Moreau’s chief enforcer. He doesn’t dare to imagine what Quinn is thinking as he looks at Eliot. “What are you doing here?”

Even though his posture is relaxed, Quinn’s voice is a little testy, and Eliot has to ignore the sting he feels at the chilly reception so that he can say in a clipped tone, “Business.”

“Oh, so it’s not because you missed your lover boy over there?” Chapman says in a snide tone, clearly still smarting over Eliot’s earlier jibe, and Eliot barely restrains himself from breaking the bastard’s bones one by one.

“Chapman.” Quinn’s voice is low and flat in that way it gets when he’s at his most deadly and furious. “Watch your damn mouth.”

To his credit, Chapman doesn’t seem cowed by Quinn’s tranquil fury, but he does shrug and step away from Eliot without making any further comments. Eliot barely pays any attention to him; he’s too busy trying to gauge whether Quinn is just as affected by the reminder of their past relationship as he is. If Quinn missed Eliot at all. 

Just as silence settles in the swimming pool, the door to the sauna opens, and Moreau steps out in a billow of steam. Eliot’s blood runs a little colder just at the sight of his warm, sharklike smile. “Eliot, what a pleasant surprise. It’s good to see you again, old friend.”

_I’m not your damn friend_ , Eliot nearly says, but he keeps his mouth shut. He can’t jeopardize any chances that the team has to pull this job off. Instead he keeps his silence and nods shortly at Moreau.

Without missing a beat, Moreau grins wider and says, “Let’s catch up.”

-

Hardison nearly drowns in a pool, and it takes every ounce of Eliot’s self-control to stay calm and not show a single inch of weakness to Moreau. Once he’s promised to do Moreau a favor and the keys to the cuffs have been tossed into the water, Eliot lets out a silent, slow exhale and allows himself a glance at Quinn, who’s looking at the pool with a faint frown. It makes Eliot’s insides squeeze in muted panic, because if anybody could see through this ruse and read between the lies that Eliot’s been telling, it’d be Quinn. And if Quinn can catch onto the fact that Eliot’s lying about Hardison’s identity, then it’s only a matter of time before Damien finds out, too.

But Quinn doesn’t say anything, not even when Hardison, shivering and drenched, comes to stand beside Eliot and ask Moreau what he should tell his employer. Even amidst the tension and worry, Eliot can’t help but feel a little proud of Hardison for maintaining their cover and his cool.

Moreau laughs, and Eliot can see that flicker of warmth in his expression, the one Moreau only shows when he’s mildly impressed. “I like him.”

Eliot’s palms sting because his nails broke through skin from how hard he was clenching his fists, fighting every instinct he had to go dive into the water and haul Hardison out. He doesn’t like the idea of Moreau liking Hardison at all, and his immediate reaction is to nod shortly at his old employer and start leading the way out of this place. But then he’s stopped by Moreau’s voice.

“Leaving already?” Moreau sounds a little amused, and when Eliot turns halfway to look over his shoulder, there’s a knowing smile on his face as he gestures at Quinn. “I thought you two might want to catch up.”

Eliot can’t stop himself from glancing at Quinn and seeing a flash of something that looks almost like apprehension cross his face before his expression turns carefully blank. Quinn’s voice is neutral when he says, “I don’t think that’s really necessary.”

For some reason, Moreau looks a hint more satisfied than a moment ago. “Well, if you say so.”

It takes all of Eliot’s self-control to not look at Quinn for even a second longer, lest anybody senses just how much he misses Quinn and uses it against him. He can’t let Moreau know. More than that, he can’t let _Quinn_ know. He’d like to think Quinn wouldn’t be cruel enough to use it against him, but he used to think that Quinn wouldn’t use Palermo against him, either. And look how that turned out.

So he turns his back on them and walks away, palms stinging and chest aching, hating the fact that walking away from Quinn is just as hard as the first time he had to do it six years ago.

-

“We’re in,” Eliot tells the team when they all regroup at the park, too embroiled in his still-lingering feelings for Quinn and too desperate to not discuss his past with the team to bother adding any more details, but Hardison doesn’t let it slide.

“Eliot used to work with Moreau back in the day,” Hardison spits, and something in Eliot’s chest cracks a little at the small ripple of shock that goes through the team. “A lot. And I’m pretty sure that Moreau’s chief guard dog is his ex.” He hisses through gritted teeth at Eliot, “ _Tell_.”

There’s a moment of silence as Hardison takes a seat next to Parker, and then Nate is getting on his feet to face Eliot. “We’ve been chasing Moreau for six months, and you didn’t tell us.”

“Because I was trying to find a way around this,” Eliot grits out, but Nate talks over him.

“Why, because you were protecting him?” Nate’s voice is sharp when he adds, “Or were you protecting your ex?”

“I’m protecting you!” Eliot snarls back. “Last time I checked, that’s my job.”

Nate makes a face, the one he always makes when he sees where the other person is coming from but thinks their concern is superfluous. Eliot normally never has a huge problem with Nate’s confidence—sometimes it’s annoying, sure, but Eliot’s job is to always make sure that confidence is well-founded—but right now, he hates it. He hates having people who actually mean something to him connect paths with Moreau, putting themselves at risk of being tainted or even destroyed by him.

Eliot’s already lost Quinn to Moreau. He can’t stand losing anybody else. 

“We can handle Moreau,” Nate says.

“We’re out of our league, Nate.” Eliot tries to make Nate understand. “Every one of Moreau’s men have innocent blood on their hands. Every one of them.” He takes a deep breath. “Every one of them are worse than me. You think you know what I’ve done?” He thinks of every fucking time he killed a civilian. He thinks of Kavala. He thinks of Palermo. “The worst thing I ever did in my entire life, I did for Damien Moreau. And I,” he swallows, “I can never be clean of that.”

“What did you do?” Parker asks, and the memory slams back into him viscerally. Palermo and blood and screaming. Coming back to San Lorenzo. On his knees, holding onto Quinn like a lifeline as Quinn asked the exact same question. Answering him, flaying himself open and crumbling apart as Quinn held him together, safe and sound, if only for a moment. 

“Don’t ask me that, Parker.” Eliot doesn’t think he can lie to Parker. Or anybody on the team. He can only ever offer the truth to them, because that’s how it works. You don’t lie to the people you care about. It’s a promise he made with Quinn that’s somehow carried over into how he operates with the team, and he could never deny them what they ask for, even if it’s the ugliest truth. But he thinks none of them will ever see him the same way once they learn every part of him. The knowledge would change things irrevocably. He thinks it’d break their damn hearts, and he doesn’t want to do that. “Because if you ask me, I’m gonna tell you. So please, don’t ask me.”

After a moment, Parker nods, and Eliot feels a small flicker of relief. And at the same time, he can’t help but miss Quinn with his entire wretched heart, because even now. Quinn is the only person who knows him entirely. 

“So,” Nate says slowly, “you’re saying everybody there has done worse things than you did.”

Eliot thinks of every single goddamn time he stood by and watched Quinn pull a trigger. Every time he’d welcomed Quinn back from a job, ignoring the scent of gunpowder and blood, not quite daring to ask what Moreau had asked of Quinn this time and instead merely asking Quinn if the job went well. He thinks of Quinn, who had become someone that killed people even before anybody asked him to do it. 

“I don’t know if I can protect you if you go up against them.” Eliot thinks that if it were just a matter of him going up against the rest of them, he might stand a chance. It’d cost him maybe a lot of blood and broken bones, but he thinks he could walk away in one piece afterwards. But not with the team that might get caught in the crossfire. And if Quinn enters the picture, Eliot isn’t sure he could win. Quinn’s always been the closest to being his equal, even more than Shelley, and while Eliot doubts that Quinn would actually go as far as taking lethal action against him, he doesn’t think Quinn would extend the same courtesy to his teammates. “Moreau’s chief enforcer is one of the most dangerous hitters out there. I don’t know if I could win a fight against him if he decides I’m better off dead.”

“But you’re the best that’s out there,” Parker says, and Eliot desperately wishes he could live up to that faith he doesn’t deserve. 

“Quinn is,” he takes a moment to steady his voice so that it doesn’t waver, “just as good as I am. And he’s a lot more willing to kill people if it’s necessary.”

“Would he kill you?” Sophie asks, and there’s something soft and sad in the way she looks at him. It makes Eliot want to hide, because it’s hard to face someone who cares about his feelings. About him.

Eliot swallows. “I don’t think so.” His voice grows smaller, just above a whisper. “I don’t know.”

The whole team has gone quiet. Eliot can tell that even Hardison is looking at him, his fury fading away as he looks at Eliot, and then he’s shaking his head and gesturing for Sophie to hand over the tablet. Nate takes a long moment, meeting Eliot’s eyes without a word, and then he nods. “So, this Quinn. Is he the only one that would give you a real problem?”

Eliot nods. “He’s good, but also…he knows me too well. He’ll know if I try to pull anything funny with the deal I made with Moreau to get the details of the auction.”

Nate cocks his head, not looking very surprised. “What does the deal entail, exactly?”

For a moment, Eliot wishes he hadn’t agreed to Damien’s terms. But to be honest, if killing someone was what it took to save Hardison, to save any member of this team, he’d do it. “I have to kill Atherton.”

-

Strangely enough, it’s not Quinn who comes to pick up Eliot for their outing to go murder Atherton. Eliot would’ve expected Quinn to show up, if only because it would make more sense for Moreau’s chief enforcer to be in charge of something like this, and because Quinn would know immediately if Eliot tried to trick them. But it’s only Chapman, and Eliot has to wonder if Quinn refused to work with Eliot. If he’s tired of cleaning up after Eliot.

Or maybe Moreau doesn’t trust Quinn not to go soft on Eliot, given their history. Considering that Quinn’s the one who ended everything, Eliot doubts that would happen.

At any rate, part of him is relieved that it’s Chapman, because it’ll be much easier to pull this job off, but he’s still a little disappointed.

When Chapman offers him a gun, Eliot rolls his eyes. Clearly, nobody gave the guy a heads up about Eliot’s methods. When Chapman tries to tell him that this isn’t how Moreau does things, Eliot summons the part of him that he buried deep down when he left San Lorenzo and growls in his most authoritative tone, “He’s never had a problem with the way I work.”

Chapman scoffs. “I heard you’d gone soft.” Still, he stows the gun away. “You and your boyfriend operate very differently.” Chapman pauses, very deliberately, then smirks at Eliot. “Ah, right. Your _ex_ -boyfriend.”

Quinn once told Eliot that Chapman was the kind of person that had a very shootable attitude. Somebody that just begged to be stabbed a few times. Eliot acutely empathizes with that exact sentiment right now. Eliot wonders if Moreau would call off the whole deal if Eliot stabbed Chapman at least a couple times. Alonso died only a few months ago; Chapman’s a relatively recent replacement. Surely it won’t be much of a hassle to have him gone. 

“I have my own way of doing things,” Eliot says, not stabbing Chapman, and instead opening the car door and getting out, ready to start the show. He really hopes this works.

-

Against all of Eliot’s worries, the plan works without a hitch. He pretends to break Atherton’s neck, they successfully get a body as Atherton’s replacement for Sophie to dramatically identify, gain Atherton’s security badge, and have the medical examiner’s office announce Atherton’s death. It takes only a few minutes for Damien to call Eliot, satisfaction rich in his voice as he tells Eliot the time and location of the auction. 

Except, of course, things go to hell when Eliot and Nate walk into a warehouse by the docks. Eliot’s not entirely surprised that they’re at the docks, given that they were Moreau’s preferred setting for his business deals in San Lorenzo, but it’s still odd, because this isn’t the usual deal where Moreau’s interacting with only one client. This is supposed to be an auction, presumably with multiple parties bidding, and a dingy warehouse isn’t exactly the kind of place you’d come to for an auction that has a two-million buy-in.

So when they arrive at the warehouse and find it eerily quiet, Eliot immediately knows something’s wrong. It takes them only two minutes to discover what exactly is wrong: there’s nothing in the warehouse but a bleeding Italian tied to a chair.

“Shit,” Nate hisses, rushing over to the Italian woman, and Eliot knows even from a short distance that while she’s still alive, it’s only a matter of time before she isn’t. Her dress is already drenched with her blood, dripping down onto the floor as it oozes from the bullet wounds in her gut and chest. It’s a sadistic move, to leave her like this instead of making a clean headshot, and it’s a calculated one, too. She’s been left barely alive specifically for Eliot to find her like this.

Eliot dials Moreau’s number and is met with cheery indifference. “Well,” Moreau says, “she knew too much, and I clearly had no use for her. For what it’s worth, she didn’t talk.”

“You’ve already sold the Ram’s Horn,” Eliot realizes with a growl, and Damien laughs. 

“It was good to see you again.” Eliot can hear Chapman’s voice from the other end of the line, saying something about their plane being almost prepared for takeoff, and Eliot realizes they’re about to lose their opportunity to take down Moreau forever. “I hope we can meet for real business some other time, when your team isn’t trying to ruin things for me.”

_Team_. Moreau knows about the team. Even though the Italian allegedly didn’t give up any information. Eliot’s head spins from the confusion, but soon the line clicks and goes silent as Moreau hangs up on him, and Eliot’s attention is grabbed by Nate hissing his name.

“She needs an ambulance,” Nate says, and he sounds strained. Furious but barely keeping it together as he tries to staunch the bleeding.

“Mr. Ford,” The woman slurs, sagging into her seat and her eyes drooping, and Eliot knows that no ambulance in the world will be fast enough to save her. “You have to go…stop him before he leaves. If he goes back to San Lorenzo…”

“Yeah, I get it, but we can worry about that later,” Nate says, his words running into each other, and Eliot wishes he knew how to protect Nate from this. The terror and helplessness of watching someone you know fade away quickly and ruthlessly, no matter how hard you try to save them. “We need you to get medical attention first.”

The woman chuckles. “Too…late…”

“Eliot, call an ambulance,” Nate yells, but Eliot knows a lost cause when he sees one. He knows the exact moment it all ends, because he can see the shallow rise and fall of her chest stop.

“Fuck, dammit, we need to resuscitate her,” Nate says, panicked, his hands painted red from blood, and Eliot grabs Nate by the shoulder.

“Nate,” he says softly, “she’s dead.”

For a moment, Nate lowers his head, and Eliot thinks he’s about to cry. But then, with a sharp inhale, he jerks his head back up. “Moreau,” he growls. “We have to go to Moreau.”

Then Nate hesitates, clearly torn about leaving the woman’s body behind, and Eliot summons ruthless practicality and tells him, “We’ll come back for her later. We gotta handle Moreau first.”

“Right,” Nate says, his voice wavering just the tiniest bit before it hardens into something solid and cold. “Let’s go get that son of a bitch.”

-

It’s strange, Eliot thinks as he drives as fast as he can towards the airplane hangar that Moreau is supposedly at. He doesn’t understand how Moreau could’ve known about the team in the first place. More importantly, he doesn’t know why Moreau chose to do nothing about it. He could have easily sent Eliot into a death trap, having his dozen men corner him at the warehouse and gun him and Nate down. But he didn’t, and now Eliot is free to screech into the parking lot, Nate wiping his bloody hands dry with tissues in the passenger seat.

Both of them get out of the car and rush towards the hangar, and it’s only when they’re about to go through the entrance that Eliot yanks Nate by the elbow.

“We could be walking straight into a kill box,” he hisses at Nate. “Wait until I make sure nobody’s about to kill us and I give you the go to come in. I’m not having you shot down on my watch.”

Nate tries to argue back, but Eliot shuts him down. “We already had one dead body. Don’t make me deal with two.”

Seemingly taken aback by Eliot’s admittance that he might not be able to protect him, Nate quiets down and nods, stepping aside for Eliot to pull the door open and head inside, ready to face down a hail of bullets if necessary—and is greeted by absolutely nothing. Sure, there’s a few men standing by the jet, with Moreau at the forefront and flanked by Quinn and Chapman, but nobody is pointing a gun in Eliot’s direction. 

Chapman scowls. “I knew he’d show up.”

“He doesn’t disappoint,” Moreau says, sounding pleased, and he turns to Quinn. “Make sure he doesn’t get in the way.”

The corner of Quinn’s mouth twitches, an unreadable look crossing his face. As Eliot runs towards them, he turns and pulls out his gun, aiming it in Eliot’s direction, and Eliot’s blood freezes in his veins. 

Eliot didn’t even realize Quinn could break his heart all over again, but apparently he was wrong, because his whole chest fucking cracks right open and his heart tumbles out and shatters against the ground. Still, he doesn’t lose momentum, because if Quinn is the one who kills him, then at least he’ll be the last thing Eliot sees. There are plenty of worse ways to go.

So he barrels forward, and Quinn pulls the damn trigger.

A gunshot rings out and white-hot pain bursts through Eliot’s shoulder. It hurts like a bitch, but Eliot doesn’t slow down, and then he’s getting close, close enough to know that Quinn’s wavered a second too long. Then Quinn is cursing, holstering his gun and throwing himself forward to send Eliot tumbling to the ground. In the background, Eliot can hear the sound of people starting to rush onto the jet, and Eliot snarls, trying to shake Quinn off of him from where he’s pinned Eliot down.

“Eliot?!” Nate’s voice rings out, the door opening, and Eliot inwardly curses Nate for not ever listening to him, but this isn’t the time to chew Nate out.

“I’m fine,” Eliot shouts, then grunts when Quinn delivers a hard gut-punch.

In the distance, he can hear Nate talking to Moreau, sounding furious and determined and absolutely unrepentant as he informs a world-class criminal that he’s framed him for a long list of crimes committed by a dead woman. Eliot doesn’t really catch the details, because he’s busy trying to fight Quinn.

It’s hard with his shoulder radiating pain, but Eliot manages to throws Quinn off, biting down on Quinn’s wrist and then punching Quinn right in the solar plexus. Quinn gasps, but he fights back, turning to kick Eliot’s side and narrowly failing to break Eliot’s ribs. From what Eliot can tell, Quinn might be doing what he can to keep Eliot down, but he’s not willing to use lethal force against him, and nobody else seems to be about to intervene in the fight, despite the clear advantage in numbers and firearms the other side has, so Eliot has a solid chance at winning this.

“Stay down,” Quinn hisses at him.

Eliot bares his teeth and growls. “Like hell I will.”

So he grapples with Quinn for a few more seconds, getting into a solid left hook to Quinn’s before he gets his own ass knocked to the floor. As he goes down, he takes a hold of the front of Quinn’s shirt and yanks it to drag Quinn down with him as his back hits the floor, and Quinn’s shirt rips open, the top four buttons popping off as Quinn’s tie is pulled askew. As Quinn leans over him, knees straddling Eliot’s hips, Eliot sees a glint of silver fall out from beneath Quinn’s shirt, dangling above his face. 

They’re Eliot’s dog tags.

Eliot freezes, his whole brain screeching to a halt as he tries to process the fact that Quinn is still wearing those dog tags, and Quinn takes that moment to crack Eliot hard across the face, enough to daze him and send his consciousness dip into hazy pain, and soon Quinn’s gone, running back towards the plane.

“Eliot?” Nate’s voice says, and he hears footsteps rushing towards him. Eliot manages to push himself halfway upright with his uninjured arm to see Quinn disappearing into the plane, the door closing behind him. Then the plane’s engines start, and Eliot knows they’ve lost.

“Shit,” Eliot breathes. He looks up at Nate’s worried face. “We lost him.”

Nate shakes his head. “We can take care of him later.” He looks strained, and Eliot realizes just how miserable Nate is. “I’ve got plans for him.”

_What plans?_ Eliot wants to ask him hysterically. Moreau is going to San Lorenzo, where he’s virtually untouchable, and all their covers have been blown. There’s no way to get him.

But right now, Eliot is losing blood and he’s reeling from the discovery that Quinn’s still wearing the proof that he belongs to Eliot, and he can’t handle any of it. So he just stops thinking and closes his eyes while Nate calls an ambulance.

-

Here’s the thing: Eliot still has the necklace Quinn gave him a long time ago. The proof that he belongs to Quinn, engraved on one side of a silver pendant. He still wears it, too. He’d deliberately taken care not to wear it for the duration of this particular job, because he hadn’t wanted Quinn to see it and make any (correct) assumptions, but he’d never, even once, considered that Quinn might still be wearing the dog tags. 

Maybe Quinn got so used to wearing them that keeping them had felt normal. Maybe it was just a nostalgic keepsake of his younger days. Maybe it meant nothing.

Well, at least that’s what Eliot keeps trying to tell himself.

“Theoretically speaking,” Eliot says in the ambulance, blaming his helpless search for an answer on the painkillers as he looks at looks up at Nate, “if you got divorced and your ex still wears your wedding ring, why the hell would they do that?”

Nate blinks at him. “Well, in this theoretical situation, do I still wear my wedding ring, too?”

Eliot doesn’t say anything, and Nate raises an eyebrow at him. That makes Eliot look down at his feet and begrudgingly mutter, “Yeah.”

“Well then.” Nate pats Eliot’s uninjured shoulder. “I’d say he probably wears it for the same reason that you do.”

“This isn’t about,” Eliot starts, looking back up with a scowl, then stops when Nate gives him an unimpressed look. With no small degree of resignation, Eliot sighs and gives in. “I don’t know. He’s the one who ended things. It doesn’t make sense.”

Nate is quiet for a moment. Then he says, “Sometimes you end things even when you still care about somebody.”

That last night in San Lorenzo, Quinn hadn’t seemed like he cared about Eliot at all. He’d been cutting and cold. Even cruel. It’s hard to imagine that Quinn had been so adamant on letting Eliot go, only to regret it afterwards. 

But Eliot can’t think of a single alternative reason for Quinn to still wear Eliot’s name around his neck. He can’t come up with any other explanation as to why Quinn, who could have easily shot Eliot’s kneecaps out, would have opted to shoot Eliot where it would cause the least amount of damage possible. He can’t justify Quinn’s choice to inflict minimal harm on him unless he considers the possibility that Quinn still _cares_ , and the prospect of Quinn still caring about Eliot makes Eliot’s chest go so tight that he can hardly breathe.

Quinn was the center of Eliot’s universe for over seven years. Even after Quinn had given him up, Eliot had spent his days missing Quinn so fiercely that all he could do was throw himself into the job, reckless and daring the world to destroy him, because he’d had nothing left. For three whole years, he’d barely felt alive. He had been merely surviving, because that’s what he was hardwired to do. 

And then he’d stumbled into having something worth living for again. A team. A family that was _his_. And while the hollow ache in his chest had never gone completely away, he’d made his peace with never getting to have Quinn in his life. Just having the team had been good enough.

Now, though, the yearning is clawing its way through his chest again, like a scabbed-over wound ripped open and bleeding. He doesn’t know what to do about it. All he knows is that part of Quinn might still belong to Eliot after all, and just the idea of it will keep Eliot up at night, driving him insane. It’s surprisingly devastating to think that Quinn might want him, even after all these years, when he’s completely out of Eliot’s reach.

So, as stupid and foolhardy and unthinkable as it might be, Eliot wants to see Quinn again. To reach Quinn and find some answers so that the possibilities don’t haunt him for the rest of his life. Eliot just wants one more fucking chance.

“We’re still going after Moreau?” He asks.

Nate doesn’t even hesitate. “Yes, we’re going after Moreau.” He pauses, giving Eliot a piercing look, like he can see right through him. “I’m guessing you won’t try to stop us this time.”

Eliot shakes his head. “I won’t.” He swallows. Just saying the words out loud hurts his throat. “We need to go to San Lorenzo.”

“Yeah,” Nate says with a sigh. “I’m afraid so.”

-

The team is quick to agree to take down Moreau once and for all, but it’s hard to find the right way into San Lorenzo. Hardison points out that the presidential election is only a couple weeks away, which gives Nate an idea, and soon Eliot is dialing a number he thought he wouldn’t really have to use again.

“General Flores,” Eliot says when the call connects, seeing a familiar face on the screen. He feels a flicker of warmth and gratitude at the sight. Eliot may have saved the man’s life twice—well, one and a half times—but Flores saved Eliot’s sanity by giving him the hope and inspiration he’d needed to finally walk away from Moreau. He’ll always owe the man a debt for that.

“Commander,” Flores says warmly, and then the conversation quickly turns towards discussing what’s happening inside of San Lorenzo’s borders. Flores tells them about how Ribera’s been arresting all of his political opposition, how Moreau has total control over the mass media within the country, and how both of those men are willing to go to extremes to ensure their rule over San Lorenzo for another seven years.

Eliot remembers what it’d been like, the months preceding the previous election. He remembers all the things he was ordered to do. He doesn’t doubt that Moreau will use every dirty trick he’s capable of to make Ribera win.

He remembers, with a distinctly bitter taste in his mouth, how he’d had the goddamn chance to stop all of this from happening when it’d been just him and Quinn and Nikolai in a dusty cabin at the edge of San Lorenzo. If he’d just said yes when Nikolai had asked them to come with him, if they’d taken the evidence of Moreau’s crimes and went to the right people, they could’ve prevented all of this. Then San Lorenzo wouldn’t be ruled by a dictator, and Moreau wouldn’t still be at large, and Nikolai would still be alive.

And maybe Quinn would still be by Eliot’s side.

But Quinn had turned Nikolai down, back then, too certain that Moreau would have them killed, and Eliot had reluctantly understood that Quinn wasn’t willing to take that kind of risk. So they’d taken Nikolai back to Moreau, and had let Ribera claim his victory.

Eliot’s always wondered if Quinn would have agreed if Eliot’d said they should let Nikolai go. He knows Quinn hadn’t really _wanted_ to take Nikolai back, but then again, Quinn had always been too faithful to whatever Moreau demanded of them. Too ready to pull the trigger, even when nobody had asked him to do so. Sure, Quinn had killed Nikolai to spare him from a slow death, but there’d been plenty of other times when Quinn had taken the initiative to kill somebody for no apparent reason. While Quinn had never shied away from murder even since he’d first met Eliot, he hadn’t killed so readily and indiscriminately until they’d started working for Damien. San Lorenzo had changed Quinn into someone that Eliot didn’t entirely understand, and that breaks Eliot’s heart to this day.

Every damn day, Eliot wishes he’d been been smart enough to never suggest going there, back when they were tired and young and on the run.

It’s too late to change things now, though, so Eliot focuses on what they can do this very moment.

What he can do is very little, when he sees San Lorenzo’s police charging in and capturing Flores while Moreau gloats on the screen. There’s nothing the team can do but watch as the screen goes blank, and Eliot feels a furious kind of despair settle over him as he turns to Nate. “We have to go there.”

“Well, can’t we just go in with our aliases?” Sophie looks at Hardison. “You can get us in, can’t you?”

Hardison shakes his head, frustration bleeding its way into his clenched jaw and furrowed brow. “It’s a tiny country with strict border control. I can cook up new IDs, sure, but if Moreau already knows about us, getting in is gonna be hell without extra help. And honestly? I dunno who could even pull those kinds of strings for us.”

“You can’t just, like, hack into their system to let us in?” Parker asks.

“I’d love to, but their system is old school, and again, I think Moreau’s keeping an eye out for any suspicious folks entering the country.” Hardison half-shrugs, glancing nervously at Nate. “Like, that Italian lady might’ve had some luck with her super spy connections, but I don’t know anybody else that could get us in there without raising a bunch of red flags on the spot.”

Something in Eliot’s brain clicks. It’s ridiculous and a hell of a long shot, but he thinks it’s worth a try. “I might have a lead.” He looks at Hardison. “I need you to track someone down for me.”

-

It’s a sunny day in Paris when Eliot knocks on the door to a gorgeous townhouse facing the Seine. When the door opens, he feels his heart catch in his throat, but he swallows it back down and ducks his head to obscure his face behind the bill of his baseball cap, holding out a package. “Delivery for Ms. Martin?” 

“I didn’t order anything,” the woman who opened the door says. She’s taller than Eliot even without heels, and she has dark blonde hair pulled back into a tidy bun. She looks just on the younger side of middle-aged, with faint laugh lines and crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes, despite the fact that she’s surely in her fifties now, and there’s nothing striking about her features except for her sharp eyes, giving Eliot a wary once-over. 

“I’m sorry, I had the wrong name.” Eliot takes a slow half-step forward to wedge his boot against the bottom of the door, preventing her from closing it. “I have a message for Katherine Troy.”

Just as he predicted, she aims a gun at his head and clicks the safety off. “Who sent you?”

Eliot lifts his head, enough for him to meet her eyes properly when he says, “I need your help. It’s about Quinn.”

For a long moment, he’s not entirely sure if she’s about to shoot him, but then she’s frowning, a glint of recognition flickering in her terribly familiar brown eyes. “You’re Eliot Spencer.”

“Yes.” She knows who he is, just like he knows who she is. “You’re Quinn’s mother.”

She grimaces as she lowers the gun, clicking the safety off. Eliot notes that it’s the same make and model of Quinn’s favorite Beretta. “What are you doing here? I thought you and Quinn weren’t working together anymore.”

“You’ve been keeping tabs on him?” Eliot’s not as surprised by that as he should be. For all that he’s heard from Quinn that his mother never outwardly expressed affection for him, that she’d walked away without a backwards glance once she’d deemed Quinn old enough to be left alone, Eliot’s always suspected that she’d cared, in her own terrible way.

She sniffs, stepping aside to let Eliot in. “It’s difficult _not_ to hear about Damien Moreau’s chief enforcer.” With a piercing look in Eliot’s direction, she adds, “The two of you made too much of a reputation for yourselves.”

Eliot wonders if she blames him for that. He’s certainly blamed himself for a lot of things. “And you’ve made sure not to get a reputation at all.” Just like how she’d taught Quinn to operate, right until he’d met Eliot. “Look, you can get my team into San Lorenzo, right?”

Katherine Troy raises a sharp eyebrow at him. “So you can accomplish what, exactly?”

“We’re gonna take down Moreau,” Eliot says, and there’s a certain thrill in saying that aloud. “And maybe bring real democracy to San Lorenzo.” He swallows. “And I need to talk to Quinn.”

She sighs, walking into the house towards the kitchen, where she pours herself a glass of wine. Eliot stands opposite of her from across the granite countertop of her kitchen island, crossing his arms and waiting for her answer. 

After a long sip, she asks, “Why should I help you?”

“Because you failed him.” Eliot thinks of Quinn, barely old enough to drink and confiding in Eliot about his parents. Quinn, on the run with Eliot, telling Eliot to never leave. Quinn, in San Lorenzo, not looking away for even a second as the boat Eliot was on sailed away, until he was just a speck on the horizon. “Because you walked away from him when you shouldn’t have, and now’s your chance to make up for that.”

She looks at him. Tilts her head just the slightest bit to the side, and Eliot hates just how fiercely his chest aches at the clear resemblance between her and Quinn. “Did you fail him?”

“I don’t know.” Eliot thinks of Quinn, who still wears Eliot’s dog tags like he still hasn’t given Eliot up. “I think I might have.”

“Well,” she says after a long moment of silence and another sip of her wine, “I do suppose having Moreau out of the picture would be quite helpful.”

Eliot doesn’t want to know what the spy community would want with Moreau’s downfall. “Can you get us in?”

The corner of his mouth curls up. “I could. But not for free.”

He had thought this might be the case. As much as he’d hoped that Quinn’s involvement in this mess would motivate her to help him, he’d known she would ask for something. She didn’t become a highly secretive, successful intelligence operative by being generous. “What do you want?”

“To do exactly as you said,” she says, which makes Eliot pause. “Take down Moreau and hand over the intel on his sources and clients to me. Make an honest president take over the office so that they owe me a favor for this.”

Eliot inwardly winces, but he figures that there are worse people he could owe these things to. He’s done his homework. Katherine Troy’s work is in cleaning out corruption and eliminating nasty problems. It shouldn’t be too hard to persuade Nate into fulfilling her demands. It’s a small price to pay for taking down Moreau.

“And before you do either of those things,” she continues, “you talk to Quinn and have him stop working for Moreau.”

Dumbfounded, Eliot stares at her. “You…want me to help Quinn get out?”

“No point in staying on a sinking ship,” she says in a matter-of-fact tone, taking another sip of her wine, and Eliot can’t read a single thing off of her poker face. “And it would be such a waste of his skills to be killed or arrested.”

It’s impossible to tell if she really means that, or if her motivations are anywhere near maternal, but Eliot will gladly take this offering and do as she says. “I can do that.”

She nods. “Good. Send me your IDs and I’ll have your team arranged to enter San Lorenzo within three days.”

“Thank you,” Eliot says, feeling a sense of relief for the first time since Hardison had confirmed for him that there was a Katherine Troy alive and well, hidden under five layers of aliases and cover stories. “My associate is sending our IDs to you right now.”

A muscle in her jaw twitches, and Eliot can’t quite tell if it’s irritation or amusement that she’s feeling at the thought that a hacker just found her email address. “Well, I can get you in, but I don’t have any influence that will help you once you’re inside the country.” She raises an eyebrow. “How do you plan on winning a clearly rigged election?”

“Oh, we’re not gonna win it,” Eliot says, and feels a satisfaction at the way she blinks slowly at him, clearly caught off-guard. “We’re gonna steal it.”

For the first time since they met, she smiles, sharp and wicked, and Eliot sees the slant of Quinn’s smile in hers, and he can’t help the rush of nostalgia he feels at the sight. “Do you plan on stealing Quinn, too?”

“No,” Eliot says, because Quinn isn’t someone he can treat like a possession, no matter how much he wants Quinn to be _his_. All Eliot can do is to set him free from Moreau. What happens after that is entirely up to Quinn. “But I’m gonna make sure nobody owns him but himself.”

And when that’s accomplished, Quinn can choose to leave Eliot behind. Eliot would never hold that against him; but if Quinn wants Eliot to be the one to walk away, then he’s shit out of luck because Eliot is done with being the one to go.

Eliot is never walking away from Quinn ever again.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: mentions of past dubiously consensual sex.

When the team arrives in San Lorenzo thanks to the help of one Katherine Troy, Eliot feels a sense of unease wash over him as they step out of the airport. Memories rush back as he looks at the familiar land ahead of them. There’s a part of him that wants to turn right back around and get out of here, to get away as far as he can and take the team with him, because this place is dangerous. Because this country is where you can easily turn into a monster. There’s too much of his own bloody history here, and even now, he doesn’t want his team anywhere near it. 

But a bigger, louder part of him wants to stride forward into the heart of this country and go find Quinn. Wants to look him in the eye and talk to him, just the two of them. He thinks he could face down a hundred gunmen without hesitation if it meant he could touch Quinn again, if only to grab his hand and pull him away from the dark. 

Eliot doesn’t know if Quinn will appreciate that. He has no idea if Quinn _wants_ to have anybody else help him or leave Moreau or even so much as talk to Eliot again. But Eliot’s going to try anyway, because he’ll be damned if he doesn’t get any answers. And if Quinn doesn’t want Eliot asking questions, then too fucking bad. Quinn’s the one who was wearing Eliot’s name around his neck; he doesn’t get to complain if Eliot comes to claim what just might still belong to him.

With that thought spurring him on and the team walking with him, Eliot starts making his way back to the center of a country he doomed with his own two hands, hoping that he can set it free.

-

While the other team members go off to stall and figure out how to win a floundering campaign in an election that’s ending in a little over a week, Eliot and Parker go searching for Flores. It’s not all that hard to find him, to be honest. Eliot knows all too well that anybody who Moreau hasn’t killed just yet will be kept in the Tombs, and sure enough, he quickly confirms that Flores is imprisoned there, along with exactly which cell he’s in.

“After we get your friend out of jail,” Parker says as they walk in the underground tunnel below Parliament, searching for the right pipe to send the cellphone up to Flores, “are you going to talk to your boyfriend?”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Eliot tells her, and she rolls her eyes. If this were anybody else, Eliot would bristle, but it’s Parker. He knows she doesn’t quite view the world the way most people do, and this includes the concept that something you care about could ever stop being yours. 

Parker asks him again, “Are you going to find your Quinn?” 

Eliot sighs. “I don’t know. Depends on whether the plan goes smoothly.” And their plans rarely work out smoothly. “We’re trying not to let Moreau catch onto the fact that we’re here yet, so maybe not until later.”

“He’s not going to shoot you again, is he?” Parker frowns, waving her flashlight around in a loose circle to illuminate Eliot’s shoulder, which is still recovering from the week-old gunshot wound Quinn gave him. “Hardison said that you’ll need some serious marriage counseling if he tries to shoot you again. Are you two married?”

“We’re not…” Eliot pinches the bridge of his nose and makes a mental note to confiscate Hardison’s junk food for a week, and also to threaten to break his second-favorite laptop. “We’re not married.”

They might as well have been, though. Eliot had given Quinn his dog tags with all the apprehension someone could feel after getting on one knee and presenting a ring. When Quinn had responded by dragging Eliot out for an afternoon of shopping for the perfect trinket to gift him in return, it had felt like a pledge. A vow to belong to Eliot just as much as Eliot belonged to him.

Eliot rubs the metal of the pendant hanging from his neck, tracing the engraving of a single initial on the underside of it with his thumb. That single engraving had always meant one thing to Eliot. _Til death do us par_ t.

But then Quinn had broken that unspoken vow, had broken all the promises they’d made each other and Eliot’s heart along with them.

So it’s difficult to imagine why Quinn would still be wearing the dog tags, given what they meant. Difficult to come up with any other reason aside from the most terrifying possibility of all, and Eliot doesn’t know what might be worse: that Quinn doesn’t give a damn about Eliot anymore, or that he missed Eliot just as much as Eliot missed him all these years.

“Eliot,” Nate’s voice cuts in through his brooding, “have you found your friend yet?”

Glad for the change in topic, Eliot clears his throat and answers, “Yeah.”

He tells Nate about where Flores is located right now and how getting him out of the place will be messy. He also shuts Parker down when she points out a steam vent as a potential entry to the Tombs, because people— _normal people_ —don’t go into steam vents. Soon enough, they locate the pipe that connects to the toilet in Flores’s cell, and they send up the phone in a sealed plastic bag. 

“General,” Eliot greets when Flores picks up the phone. “We’re working on a way to get you out of there, sir.”

“And my people?” Flores asks, because he’s an honorable man. Eliot’s always respected that about him, but in this moment it’s pretty discouraging. Even as he tries to tell Flores that getting him out alone would be hard enough, Flores doesn’t budge. To be honest, Eliot hadn’t expected him to. There’s a reason Flores is a leader with many loyal followers, after all. “These people you are with now, would you leave any of them behind? Ever?”

At Flores’s words, Eliot turns to see Parker beaming at him, not a single inkling of doubt in him in her eyes, and he knows that he could never let that unwavering trust down. 

He’s already left behind someone he treasured before; he doesn’t think he could survive doing it again.

“I thought so,” Flores says, and that’s Plan A going completely down the drain.

With their best chance at winning this election taken off the table, the team’s plan hinges on a man named Michael Vittori, and from what Eliot can glean over the comms while he and Parker make it back upstairs, he’s not exactly what anybody would consider good presidential material. Eliot is pretty sure they’re going to have to resort to Plan G, or however far back in Nate’s list of schemes they can use now that their best option has fallen through.

At least, that’s the case until Sophie intervenes, throwing herself into the spotlight and likely attracting Moreau’s attention, and Eliot breaks into a sprint to get back into Parliament. If Moreau comes to pull any dirty moves on the team, Eliot sure as hell will be there to put a violent stop to it.

When Eliot makes it to the balcony where Nate is, Nate welcomes him back with a sigh and a tilt of his head, indicating where Sophie is dazzling reporters down on the main floor of Parliament down below. 

“She’s gonna make herself a target,” Eliot grumbles, checking every possible vantage point in the vicinity where anybody might dare to take a shot at her. The building hasn’t changed at all since Eliot was last here under Moreau’s employment, and he instinctively knows where the best spots would be to ever attempt an assassination in this hall. 

“Yeah, well, at least nobody’s going to try anything when all the cameras are pointed her way,” Nate says, sounding resigned. Eliot can tell by the line of his shoulders that he’s still tense, though, and he can hardly blame the man. Having had that Italian woman bleed out under his hands had inflicted a kind of damage on Nate that Eliot suspects will never go entirely away. 

Hardison then joins them, talking about how the online feedback to Sophie’s presence is great, and that he can graft her backstory onto one of her IDs once she’s done making it up. Eliot tunes him out halfway through, because he becomes instantly aware of the heavy footsteps of security, and even out of the corner of his eye, Moreau’s suit and smile are unmistakable. 

“Aw, hell, it’s Moreau,” Hardison groans.

“Yes, I caught that,” Nate says, turning to look at Moreau, and Eliot takes a moment to assess all the threats surrounding them. The men here are mostly official security; not Moreau’s men. The only ones who aren’t wearing the security guard uniforms are Chapman, who looks vaguely amused, and Quinn. Who is staring at the necklace that Eliot deliberately chose to wear over his crewneck, with the silver pendant glinting in plain sight against dark cotton.

After what feels like an eternity, but was probably closer to a few seconds, Quinn’s eyes snap up to meet Eliot’s, and Eliot can see the tumble of emotions crossing over Quinn’s face as clear as day. As much as Quinn has always been better at hiding his emotions than him, Eliot _knows_ Quinn, maybe better than anybody else even after all these years, and he can read the confusion and panic and what looks like a flicker of longing in Quinn’s micro expressions and near-imperceptible shifts in his body language. It last only a couple seconds before Quinn’s expression shutters, leaving on a blank facade, but Eliot’s seen enough to give him a sense of optimism and a vague suspicion that Quinn is hiding something. Not just possible lingering feelings for Eliot, but something else. Something he’s afraid of letting anybody else see.

“Now, come along,” Moreau says, and Eliot tenses, ready to start a fight if need be, but Nate cuts him off with a breezy attitude and sharp words, telling Moreau in no uncertain terms that if he tries to lay a finger on the team, footage of what he’s doing will go immediately to the authorities. Moreau looks fairly unimpressed at Nate’s bluff, utterly unbothered by the threat of international agencies wanting his head. He knows, just as well as everybody here does, that he’s untouchable in this country. “That’s not my problem.”

“Well, I think you should know, though,” Nate says almost casually, “that there are more U.N. Election officials here in this country right now than there are tourists. Now, your man Ribera, he’s already arrested his main opponent. So if anything further were to go wrong with his election, like, say, the kidnapping of U.S. Citizens, well, you just might lose your safe haven.”

Eliot doesn’t remember a single time when somebody, a mere civilian at that, wasn’t cowed by Moreau and challenged him head on in the country that Moreau owns entirely. As tense and nerve-wracking the whole moment is, it’s still exhilarating to see the exact moment when Moreau’s eyebrow twitches, realizing that Nate has a very valid point. Seeing Moreau reach an impasse with anybody is a rare treat, and Eliot savors the moment as Moreau concedes for now, turning and walking away, Chapman trailing after him. 

When Quinn takes a second too long to turn and follow suit, Eliot feels a spark of hope light up in his chest.

-

The next day in the campaign office, Hardison points out that Vittori is up by ten points on the polls, which Nate is quick to dismiss as not enough. He shoots Eliot and Parker significant looks as he tells them to start looking at the other plans they’ve set up to wreck Ribera’s campaign, and Eliot is all too willing to accomplish that.

So over the next few days, they all get to work on the campaigning, both boosting Vittori’s popularity and ruining Ribera’s image as much as possible.

There’s a certain kind of satisfaction in doing his part of the con, dragging Ribera down rung by rung on the presidential ladder. Eliot helped Ribera claim the office and he’d always regretted that, from the very moment Ribera’s victory had been announced at the expense of Nikolai’s life to well past Eliot’s departure from San Lorenzo. So it only feels right to unseat Ribera using every trick they can, and Eliot feels a vicious glee as he swabs the nicotine cream onto Ribera’s wristwatch.

That, however, barely compares to the sheer delight Eliot feels when he goes to be interviewed on live TV as a Canadian animal-rights activist to accuse Ribera of being an active host and spectator of dog fighting. 

“So you contend that dogs were made to fight to the death in the courtyard of the Presidential Palace?” The reporter who’s interviewing him asks.

“Oh, absolutely,” Eliot says, reaching over to fetch the puppy he procured for this exact moment. “Even puppies as young as this one right here.” He decides to throw in a little comment to hammer in another nail in Ribera’s metaphorical coffin. “This adorable little thing right here.” 

He can barely muffle the laughter bubbling up his chest as he presses a quick kiss to the soft head of the puppy he’s holding, and he tries not to grin too hard at the idea of Ribera throwing a fit at these allegations. Eliot hopes that Quinn can’t help but smile at the sheer ridiculousness and cunning of this particular assault on Ribera’s reputation. 

When it’s time for the debate, Eliot feels the exquisite joy of watching Ribera humiliate himself on a national level as he gives off the image of a drunkard, and is then fairly impressed by Vittori’s ability to win the crowd over with a simple but rousing question. Eliot has to hand it to Sophie; she really worked her magic on this guy.

“Things are going pretty well,” Hardison says through the comms. “Half of Twitter is speculating that Ribera’s an alcoholic, and the other half is talking about how Vittori seems like a really decent guy.” He pauses. “There’s a lot of people who are calling him a puppy, which, I don’t know what’s going on there.”

“Oh, I can kind of see it,” Sophie murmurs.

Nate sighs. “Well, puppy, kitten, hamster—whatever. As long as he’s getting their votes.”

“That’s all great, but we still have two days to go before the election is over.” Eliot knows the plan. He knows it’s a pretty decent one, all things considered. He’s still nervous, though. Tomorrow is his best shot to convince Quinn to get out while he still can, and there’s a million ways that conversation could go wrong. He’s not even sure he’ll get a chance for them to talk. After that first day when Quinn had been accompanying Moreau at the balcony in Parliament, Eliot hasn’t seen him at all. “Don’t let your guards down.”

“Tomorrow is gonna be so much fun,” Parker says over the comms, because it’s probably her favorite part of the plan. Eliot can’t help but swallow a sigh at her enthusiasm. Only she would enjoy walking into what many people might consider a death trap.

Eliot resigns himself to what’s going to be a long day tomorrow. “Don’t jinx it, Parker.”

-

Parker must’ve jinxed it, because the next day is not fun at all.

It’s crunch time for the election, the last day before voting really starts, and Nate is working with Sophie and Hardison to keep building the momentum to push Vittori towards a close call in the polls. Meanwhile, Eliot and Parker have just enough time to do what Eliot’s been dreading the whole week they’ve been in San Lorenzo.

They break into Moreau’s estate. 

Shockingly enough, it’s easier than Eliot expected. Sure, there’s plenty of trigger-happy guards on the premise, but security is looser than he thought it would be. Clearly, the men here have grown so used to the fact that nobody would dare lay a finger on Moreau on his own turf that the formerly tight security has gone lax. It helps that Eliot still knows the place like the back of his hand, and Parker is, well, Parker. Eliot doubts there’s any place in the world that she could be kept out of. 

So they go in. Moreau is too focused on the election and spending his days in the Presidential Palace, so this is the perfect time to break into his study and find the records of his dirty dealings. Eliot makes sure to take photos of everything they discover, sending them to Katherine as he promised.

Mission accomplished, Parker decides to lead them on a detour to go raid Moreau of his valuables.

Thankfully, it takes Parker only a short amount of time to be satisfied with the number of gold bars she hefts into both of their duffle bags. Then it’s Eliot’s turn to take them on a detour, heading to the eastern wing of the estate and stopping in front of a terribly familiar door.

He doesn’t know if Quinn is still using the same room he used to share with Eliot while they worked for Moreau together. But this is his best guess as to where he might find any answers, so he takes a deep breath and knocks on the door.

Nobody answers. When Eliot tries the doorknob, it's locked.

“Parker,” Eliot says, and she immediately kneels in front of the door, picking the lock in a matter of seconds, and then Eliot doesn’t hesitate to push the door open, his heart in his throat as he steps inside the room. 

Nothing much has changed. It’s almost exactly as he remembers, with the same wallpaper and same setup of furniture, and for an unsettling, disorienting moment, Eliot feels like he never left the place at all. It’s only Parker’s presence before him that keeps his mind rooted to the present, rather than drowning in the past.

Once he’s gotten over his twisted sense of nostalgia, Eliot realizes two things: one, Quinn’s things are still here, meaning that he still lives in this room; two, the bathroom door is completely closed. And Quinn always leaves the bathroom door cracked open…unless he’s inside it.

After dropping his bag silently on the floor, Eliot takes a step forward. Then another. He keeps going until he reaches the door. He doesn’t dare open it, or even stand directly in front of it, because he can’t be sure that Quinn won’t attempt to shoot him again, so he simply lets out a ragged exhale and a shaky name. “Quinn?”

There’s a beat of silence, and then the door opens with a slam as Quinn steps out, a knife in the hand hanging by his side as he stares incredulously at Eliot. ”What the _hell_ are you doing here?”

“Taking a tour,” Eliot snaps back on autopilot even as his mind is reeling. Quinn is in just a teeshirt and a pair of chinos, his hair damp and loose as if he just stepped out of a shower, and he looks less guarded and so much more like the Quinn that Eliot knew inside-out. The very sight makes his whole body ache with longing. “I’m here to talk to you, you asshole.”

“So you broke into Damien’s estate?” Quinn hisses. Then he notices Parker, and the incredulity on his face grows impossibly more pronounced. “With your _team_?”

It’s funny that Quinn can recognize Parker on sight, despite the fact that she’s never shown her face in front of any of Moreau’s men before. Eliot shelves that particular detail to consider later and focuses on his main objective. “Quinn, come with me.”

Quinn freezes. “What?”

Eliot keeps his voice steady, trying to not let uncertainty bleed into his voice as he says, “We’re taking down Moreau. He’s going down, and you can get out right now.”

If Quinn is even the slightest bit loyal to Moreau, he’d easily kill Eliot right now. He’d call in every guard on the premises and have Eliot and Parker locked up. If Quinn chooses Moreau over Eliot, just like he had six years ago, then Eliot might not make it to the outside of this place ever again.

But Eliot’s willing to place his bets on Quinn’s loyalty skewing even the slightest bit more towards him, because under the thin cotton of Quinn’s shirt, he can see the shape of his dog tags resting against Quinn’s chest.

And as Eliot has desperately, cautiously hoped, Quinn doesn’t sound the alarm or threaten him. Instead, he just looks stunned. “Are you insane? Eliot, I _shot_ you.”

“Yeah, and you could’ve shot me somewhere a lot worse.” Eliot sees the way Quinn’s gaze flickers towards his shoulder, then comes back up, just short of looking Eliot in the eye. “You’re the best damn shot I know. You went for the least amount of damage you could do.”

“So you think just because I don’t want to kill you, I’ll leave everything behind and run away with you?” Quinn scoffs, the shock fading into condescension. “That’s a hell of a leap of logic.”

Eliot doesn’t let the barbed words bother him. He’s looking carefully enough to see the cracks in the facade that Quinn is putting up, and he wants so badly to tell Quinn that it’s okay, that he doesn’t need to put up a front. That he never needs to hide what he really wants. Not from Eliot.

“Come with me,” Eliot says, softer, and he feels his heart jump to his throat when Quinn meets his eyes properly once more.

“Whatever you and your team planned, it’s not going to work,” Quinn hisses. “He owns everything. The media, the banks, the goddamn armed forces—no matter how hard you try, he’s going to keep this country by any means possible, and then he’s going to come after you.” His expression hardens. “I’m not leaving.”

“I’m not leaving without you,” Eliot counters.

Quinn glances at Parker, who’s leaning against the closed door, Eliot’s duffle bag by her feet. Then he looks back at Eliot, who crosses his arms and dares Quinn to make a move. Eliot’s only half-bluffing. He’s going to have to help Parker get out of here, but he only plans to help her reach the car they parked half a mile away before he comes back to Quinn, planting himself here until Quinn concedes. If Quinn really doesn’t want to see Eliot dead, then it’s only a matter of time until he folds.

Just as Eliot predicted, Quinn sighs. “Fine. Follow me.”

Quinn slips on a pair of socks and shoes, tugging on a blazer over his shirt before he leads the way out of the estate. It reminds Eliot a little of the old days, back when he and Quinn used to go on retrieval jobs that required sneakiness and subtlety, and he can’t help but feel a small smile tug at the corner of his mouth.

It’s only when they’ve managed to escape to the car that Quinn stops and says, “You should go now.”

Eliot pauses, then turns to Quinn with a scowl. “Are you kidding me? You came all this way to, what, walk me to the damn car?” He tries to reconcile the Quinn that still wears Eliot’s name and the Quinn that refuses to come with him, and there’s no answer that can put the two together. It’s impossible to parse where Quinn’s loyalty truly lies right now, because he’s clearly unwilling to leave Moreau, but he’s not willing to harm Eliot, either. If this all stems from fearing retribution from Moreau for leaving, it still doesn’t make sense that Quinn never worried about Eliot getting killed by walking away all those years ago. Eliot doesn’t understand what the hell Quinn is thinking. “What’s stopping you from walking away from this place?”

Quinn is quiet for a moment, entirely unreadable, and Eliot hates this. Ever since they started working for Moreau, Quinn had more and more moments where he was indecipherable, even to Eliot, and it’d always worried him. They’d both changed under Moreau’s wing, but of the two of them, Quinn had changed more drastically into somebody that Eliot couldn’t understand sometimes, and Eliot had hated Moreau for that. Even more than he’d hated what he’d done on Moreau’s orders, Eliot had loathed Moreau’s influence on Quinn.

“Nothing’s stopping me,” Quinn finally says. “I told you, whatever you’ve planned isn’t going to work.”

“And if we make it happen?” Eliot narrows his eyes.“If you’re still with Moreau tomorrow, you could go down with him.” 

Quinn shrugs. “I’m feeling pretty confident about my odds.”

“And if we fail,” Eliot says, not that he thinks it’ll actually happen, because he can’t let his faith in Nate and the team waver right now, but he wants to push Quinn and see how he reacts, “you’re gonna watch Moreau put bullets in us?”

The corner of Quinn’s mouth twitches. “He’s not going to kill you.”

Eliot frowns. “You don’t know that.”

“He likes you too much to kill you.” Quinn glances at Parker. “But if he wants your team dead, well. I’m not stopping him.”

The very words feel like a kick to the solar plexus. Quinn’s cavalier attitude towards the fate of the people Eliot cares about hurts more than he expected. “So, what, you’re gonna stay here? Even if it means getting arrested?”

“If that worries you so much, then maybe you should stop this bullshit and _run_ ,” Quinn snaps. For all that he sounds frustrated and angry, there’s a hint of distress to his tone that Eliot can hear clear as day. “Leave Damien alone. Get out of here. Do your whole Robin Hood thing with your team somewhere else.”

Eliot grits his teeth. “I ain’t running.”

“Well, I’m not, either.” Quinn presses his lips together, looking conflicted for a moment before he sighs and shakes his head. “I won’t tell Damien about your visit. Or your souvenirs,” he adds, raising an eyebrow at their duffle bags. “Just—don’t come back.”

There’s so many mixed signals that Eliot can’t decipher, so he finally gives up on trying to figure out whatever Quinn isn’t telling him and asks him point-blank, “Did you miss me?”

It takes a moment for Quinn to reply. “Sometimes.” He pauses, then pulls the chain with the dog tags over his head. Eliot watches the metal glint under the sunlight and feels his heart sink when Quinn says, “Not anymore.”

Then Quinn tosses the tags to Parker, who catches them with steady hands and an uncertain look on her face. 

“You can have that back.” Quinn looks at Eliot one more time, and he looks tired. “I’m done with you.”

With that said, Quinn walks away, and Eliot can’t stop him.

“Maybe he didn’t mean it.” Parker cautiously hands Eliot his dog tags after he gets in the driver’s seat, and he has to swallow his ruined heart down before he can take it from her. She looks at him with furrowed brows, concern flickering in her eyes. “Maybe he was lying.”

Eliot takes a moment before turning the key in the ignition. He’s never considered that Quinn might ever outright lie to him. Even now, even on opposing sides, he’s never once thought of that. “He’s never lied to me before.” Something cold slithers in his blood. “But there’s a first time for everything.”

-

The possibilities plague Eliot all morning and afternoon as he works on autopilot to prepare the con for its final phase. He can’t quite connect all the dots, but his brain keeps wondering if Quinn ever could have lied to him. How far back any lies might have started. He can’t stop wondering about it all, and the thing that he keeps getting stuck on is what on earth Quinn could have lied about. He hadn’t lied about his past, or anything significant that Eliot hadn’t confirmed for himself. The only possibility Eliot can really think of is their time with Moreau, and he still can’t think of anything. Quinn might’ve been not entirely forthcoming about the sordid details of his jobs, but there still wasn’t any reason to lie about those when he could choose to say nothing at all.

Could Quinn have lied about how much he cared about Eliot? The idea alone feels like a slap to his face, and it takes all of Eliot’s willpower to calmly think it over. There’s no good reason for Quinn to have lied about that…unless he’d been lying towards the end of things. If the devotion had died away and he’d simply kept Eliot to warm his bed or out of guilt. It seems unlikely, though. Or maybe that’s Eliot’s wishful thinking. Either way, he tries not to dwell on that possibility too much.

“You okay?” Nate asks in an undertone as they walk through the garden behind their hotel. They’re supposed to be mapping out all possible escape routes in the case that Moreau and Ribera decide to come after them earlier than they expect, but clearly Nate can tell how distracted Eliot is.

“As okay as I can be with Moreau breathing down our necks,” Eliot grumbles, not entirely willing to go into the details about how he’s questioning every part of his prior relationship with Quinn.

Nate chuckles dryly. “Yeah, well. Let’s hope he’s feeling the heat just as much as we are, if not more.”

“He might make rash choices if he feels too much pressure.” Eliot remembers Moreau’s flares of temper and more drastic decisions that were made in sour moods. Usually Freeman was there to talk Moreau out of making bad choices, but Moreau doesn’t have anybody to keep him in check anymore. “Dangerous choices.”

“Well, let’s hope that we take him by surprise tomorrow.” Nate pauses at the same time as Eliot stops walking. “Oh boy.”

Moreau strides in, looking particularly pissed off, even with his smile still firmly in place. Eliot can make out Chapman and three other men standing by the entry to the garden, and he’s sorely tempted to pick a fight with them. “Eliot, Ford. Just the men I wanted to see.”

“Can’t say I return the sentiment,” Nate says.

“Well, that’s fine.” Moreau looks at Eliot, eyes sharp and smile even sharper. “I’m here to offer you a deal.”

Eliot nearly snorts. “You know that I’m not gonna buy whatever you’re selling.”

“Of course.” Moreau cocks his head to the side with a smirk that makes Eliot feel a frisson of worry. He knows that look. It’s the look Moreau bestows on people when he’s seen right through them and is about to press down on somebody’s pressure point. “But what if the price is Quinn?”

Eliot’s heart nearly stops. “What?”

“If you take your team and leave tonight,” Moreau says slowly, “and stay out of my business from now on, I’ll let you go. But if you’re still here tomorrow, I’ll kill Quinn.”

“You’re going to kill your own chief enforcer?” Eliot asks, disbelieving. Beside him, Nate has gone still, allowing Eliot to take over the conversation. “Just to get us out of here? Are you fucking insane?”

Moreau shrugs. “Well, it’d be a shame, but I can always find someone else.”

It’s a bluff. It has to be. But Eliot wouldn’t put it past Moreau to actually see it through, and the idea that Quinn’s life hangs in the balance makes Eliot’s refusal lodge in his throat. 

His moment of hesitation is enough for Moreau to grin, savage and pleased. “You still care about him, don’t you?”

Eliot swallows hard and thinks carefully. He has to admit that keeping Quinn’s life hostage would be good incentive to keep Eliot in line, but Quinn is the only card that Moreau really has that he can use against Eliot. If Moreau gets rid of Quinn, he’ll have no other bargaining chip. Moreau knows that. Every decent criminal knows that when there’s only one hostage, killing them leads to your own downfall. This is just a desperate gamble.

So even though it feels like gutting himself, he says, “I’m not taking that deal.”

A muscle in Moreau’s jaw twitches, and Eliot knows that he’s successfully called his bluff. “I always knew that you’d be too stubborn for this.”

There’s a subtle emphasis in the way he says _you_ , as if there were other people who had taken that exact deal. It wouldn’t surprise Eliot. Moreau is the exact kind of monster who uses everything and anything to make things go his way. Of course he’d try to use Eliot’s own heart against him, using that devotion and fear to make Eliot do his bidding. Of course he’d use Quinn to—

_Quinn_. 

“Is that what you did to make Quinn stay and work for you?” Nate asks. “Threaten to kill Eliot?”

Eliot can’t breathe. He can hardly think. All he can do is watch Damien blink once, twice. _Please don't let it be true_.

Then Damien smiles. “Oh, didn’t you know?”

_No,_ Eliot thinks numbly.

“Well, it looks like the cat is out of the bag,” Moreau says with a vicious kind of satisfaction, as if he’s too angry to care about keeping secrets anymore. Eliot distantly recognizes that Moreau’s temper is getting the best of him, but he can’t muster a single word as it all comes rushing in. The inconsistencies. The conflicting emotions on Quinn’s face. The way Quinn had pushed him away as cruelly as possible. The way Quinn had still stood there at the docks of San Lorenzo, watching Eliot sail away, as if he couldn’t turn his back on Eliot at all. “I suppose it was only a matter of time. It’s getting quite hard to work around the issue of keeping you alive when you’re being such a thorn in my side.”

“That’s why you didn’t try to kill Eliot back in Boston.” Every word from Nate’s mouth makes another puzzle piece click in Eliot’s brain. How nobody had tried to lay a hand on Eliot, even when he’d come running for Moreau at the airport hangar. How Quinn had seemed so sure that Moreau would never kill Eliot. “Because if Eliot dies, your chief enforcer won’t be under your thumb anymore.”

“It’s been so inconvenient, making sure you’re alive and well, Eliot,” Moreau drawls, and it all makes sense now. Of course Moreau and Quinn knew about the team. They must’ve been keeping close tabs on Eliot this whole time, knowing that the instant Eliot died, Quinn’s loyalty to Moreau would vanish, too. 

Eliot finally manages to wrench words out of his throat. They hurt, like broken glass dragged out of his flesh. “You used me against him.”

A flash of pleasure crosses Moreau’s face at the sound of Eliot’s ragged voice. “Well, you were so useful. Did you know he’d do anything for you? All I have to do is say your name and he does everything I tell him to.” The smile on Moreau’s face widens, his voice dipping lower as he says, “He makes such a pretty sight when he spreads his legs for me, too.”

White-hot rage burns through Eliot, and before he can think it through, he’s lunging at Moreau with a snarl. The only reason he doesn’t manage to snap Moreau’s neck is because Nate grabs him around the waist, hissing his name. “Eliot, stop! Eliot!”

“Let go of me,” Eliot snaps. He’s going to _destroy_ Moreau. How dare he touch Quinn. How fucking dare he force Quinn into bed using Eliot’s name? 

Nate squeezes Eliot’s waist, and the only reason Eliot doesn’t throw him off is because he knows he can’t do it without injuring Nate. “Not now,” Nate says in an urgent tone. “Eliot, not yet.”

Moreau laughs, seemingly satisfied with having upended Eliot’s entire world, and Eliot feels another hot rush of fury sweep through him. “We’ll see how well he listens to me when I have you locked up and at my mercy for the rest of your life.”

With that, Moreau turns and walks away, and Eliot tries one last time to throw himself after him to choke the smug bastard. Nate barely manages to hold him back, his voice almost apologetic as he says, “Eliot, I know you’re angry, but I need you to wait just one more day—”

“The hell would you know?” Eliot growls, shaking him off now that Moreau is out of sight and Nate’s hold has slackened. He bares his teeth at Nate, too heartbroken and furious to remember that he doesn’t deserve to bear the brunt of Eliot’s anger. “You think you know anything about what it means to work for Moreau? What it means to spend six whole fucking years doing what Moreau wants even when you don’t want to?” His voice cracks on his next words. “You think you know what it’s like to hear that he lived through hell because of me?”

Nate holds up his hands placatingly. “I know he means a lot to you.”

Eliot almost laughs at that, because those words don’t come even remotely close to how much Quinn matters to him. Quinn is the _love of Eliot’s life_ , and Eliot fucking left him behind. “That’s a hell of an understatement.”

Nate looks at him, and Eliot has no idea what he sees, but it must be pretty damn awful, because Nate’s voice is quiet and sad when he says, “I’m sorry.”

-

That night, Eliot’s pacing in his bedroom, fuming and despairing and going through a whole rollercoaster of emotions that he can’t control, when Sophie knocks on his door.

“I thought you could use this,” she says, holding up a six-pack of craft beer.

Eliot hesitates. “We’ve got a big day ahead.”

Sophie raises an elegant eyebrow at him. “And you had an awful day today. If you don’t unwind a little, you’re going to snap clean in half during the finale tomorrow.”

He hesitates for a second more, but then lets Sophie in with a sigh. “Yeah, okay, you’re right. “

They each crack a beer open, Eliot gulping mouthfuls down while Sophie takes slow sips, sitting in the armchairs in a corner of the room while they drink in silence. Eliot knows Sophie is waiting for him to start talking, but he’s not ready yet, so he keeps drinking his way through the beer until he’s halfway through his second one, feeling the buzz roll slow and thick through his blood. It’s nowhere enough to get him drunk—he knows his limits, and he stays well away from going near them during jobs—but it’s just enough for him to finally open his mouth.

“It all feels like my fault,” he finally confesses, and Sophie looks at him. He doesn’t meet her eyes and instead focuses on his beer. “I fucked up.”

“It’s not your fault,” Sophie says. Nate had filled the team in about Quinn; Eliot had been too devastated to discuss it with anybody yet. “Moreau is the one to blame here, not you.”

His throat feels too dry, so he takes another swig of his beer. “I should’ve known something was up. I shouldn’t have left him.”

“Eliot, you’re not a mind reader. There’s no way you could have known that he was trying to protect you.” Sophie’s voice is soft and soothing in a way that makes Eliot want to believe every word she says, and Eliot wonders if it’s a grifter thing or a Sophie thing. “As a professional liar, I can tell you that it’s never your fault for taking someone else at their word. Especially when it’s a loved one.”

There’s a lump caught in Eliot’s throat that he doesn’t know how to articulate. It feels wrong to even say it out loud, but it’s the one thought he keeps coming back to. It takes him three more gulps of his beer before he can say in a small voice, “I think I’m mad at him.”

He can catch Sophie’s bewildered blink through his peripheral vision, and he’s about to wince and tell her to forget it when she says, “Of course you are. He lied to you.”

Not quite sure what to do with that answer, Eliot rubs his thumb across the glass bottom of the beer bottle. His feelings consolidate, ugly and warped and brittle. “It doesn’t feel right. He did all that for me, and I know I should be grateful or something, but I’m so fucking mad at him.”

Sophie sets her beer down, glass clinking against wood as she crosses her legs and folds her hands in her lap. “You have every right to be mad at him. Eliot, what would you have done if he’d told you the truth? If you’d known that Moreau was trying to blackmail him?”

“I would’ve stayed.” The answer is immediate and obvious. Eliot never would have willingly left Quinn behind if he’d known Quinn didn’t really want him to go.

“Right, but you couldn’t, because Quinn took that choice away from you.” Sophie rests a gentle but firm hand on his arm. Her voice is kind but unflinching. “He made your choice for you when he shouldn’t have. It’s natural that you’re angry at him.”

And that’s the crux of the problem, isn’t it. Eliot can’t forgive himself for failing Quinn, but he also can’t forgive Quinn for putting Eliot in this position. Eliot still loves Quinn—he doesn’t think he could ever stop, no matter what Quinn does—but the anger is still there, boiling in his chest, eating away at him like acid.

“You know what this reminds me of?” Sophie squeezes his arm, and Eliot instinctively looks up to meet her eyes. “When Nate lied to us and got arrested.”

Eliot doesn’t think he could dare equate Nate going to jail for a short period of time to the horror of working for Moreau for years, but he thinks he sees Sophie’s point. “You don’t con your team.”

“You told that to me, too,” Sophie says with a faint smile. “And you’re right. It doesn’t matter how good his intentions were or how great his sacrifice was. He made a selfish choice by not giving you the chance to do the right thing by him, and saddled you with the guilt of something you never asked for.”

Eliot thinks back to that stomach-lurching moment when Moreau had named Quinn’s life as a price to be paid. If he’d been younger, stupider, with no better options and no team to support him, he might’ve taken that offer. “I get why he did it, though.”

Sophie’s smile turns bittersweet. “You can be angry at somebody even when you understand them. Just like how you can love someone even when you haven’t forgiven them.”

Eliot glances down at his beer, then back at Sophie’s face. He still feels like a patchwork puzzle fitted all wrong, his emotions still a mess of frustration and longing and guilt, but there’s a sense of peace in knowing that this anger isn’t a selfish thing. “I guess so.” He offers Sophie a hesitant smile. “Thanks.”

“For the beer? You’re welcome.” Sophie squeezes his arm one more time before letting go and picking her bottle back up. She winks at him. “Next time we discuss feelings, though, we’re drinking wine.”

-

The next morning, gathered in Nate’s room before they leave the hotel for the big day, Eliot looks at his team and says, “I don’t want Quinn to go down with Moreau.”

Nate looks at him with a blank face. “You’re saying you want to let him off the hook for everything he’s done as Moreau’s chief enforcer.”

Eliot tenses up. “I know it’s a lot to ask for—”

“It’s certainly a lot.” Nate clears his throat. “But yes, we were planning on that anyway.”

“What?” Eliot looks at Hardison, who nods, Parker, who shrugs, and then Sophie, who smiles at him.

“Yeah, well, we figured that we owe him one, so we’re gonna make sure he’s not on the list for people to be arrested,” Hardison says.

“You owe him one?” Eliot asks, confused.

Parker looks at him with a bright grin. “For letting us meet you, obviously.”

He feels his breath stutter in his chest. “Oh.”

“Quinn’s the reason you’re with us today,” Sophie adds. “So we think it’s only fair that we thank him for that.”

Eliot wonders just how the hell he got so lucky to have these people become his family. Somehow, despite all the wrongs he’s done, he’s managed to find this team, and he’s managed to find someone who loves him enough to bargain their whole life for him, even if that still pisses Eliot off. He doesn’t deserve any of them, not really, but they’re still his anyway. It’s up to him to do his best to do right by them.

“Thank you,” Eliot says, looking each team member in the eye, and each one of them smiles back.

“Right,” Nate says, clapping his hands together. “It’s showtime, everybody.”

-

Just as the news starts reporting a prediction of Vittori’s win, Eliot moves into position. He goes with Hardison to disguise themselves as tactical assault team members sent down to the Tomb while Parker gets to work on setting the prisoners free. It all goes smoothly, even up to the point where Flores puts on the tactical gear to join Eliot in their fake attempt to assassinate Vittori. From there, all they need is for Nate to work his magic on Ribera, and everything will be over.

Or, well, that was the plan.

While Flores goes to join Vittori with the security guards to go to the presidential office, Eliot listens to Nate through the comms, gauging whether he needs to go intervene or if Nate doesn’t need any help. He’s so focused on trying to make sure Nate is safe that he realizes a second too late that he’s been surrounded by a dozen of Moreau’s men.

Chapman smirks at him, gun aimed at Eliot’s head, and Eliot feels a surge of irritation at the sight.

“You’re full of surprises, Spencer.” Chapman clicks the safety off, and Eliot quickly does a headcount. They’re in a secluded corner behind the Presidential Palace, so there aren’t any immediate witnesses, and aside from Chapman, all the other men are holding knives or batons. Even now, they must be on orders not to kill Eliot. “I don’t know how you got Flores out, but it’s no matter. We’ll have you taking up his cell instead.”

Eliot takes a moment to listen in on Nate’s voice saying _you could have a nice pension, a nice estate in the country_. He’s sinking his hooks into Ribera, and Eliot can tell it’s only a matter of minutes before Moreau is possibly locked up for good. Having a fight right here could interrupt Nate’s spiel, so Eliot needs to stall. 

“Where’s Quinn?” He asks, making a show of glancing around and taking that opportunity to observe his surroundings better. He mentally maps out the fastest way to incapacitate every enemy here as he maintains a relaxed stance. “Haven’t seen him in a while.”

Chapman snorts derisively. “Your boy toy’s been grounded. He won’t be leaving the estate until we’ve made sure you’re not going to cause us any more trouble.”

Eliot pauses. “You…locked Quinn up.”

“We have him contained just for now,” Chapman corrects. “He’ll be perfectly comfortable in the red chamber.”

The red chamber. That wasn’t a name used back in the day when Eliot lived in San Lorenzo, but he can make a pretty good guess which room it is. There’s only one place in the estate with blood red walls and no windows, barren and smelling faintly of copper. It’s where they take prisoners to be held, sometimes to be interrogated and executed. It’s where Nikolai died.

“You’re gonna regret that,” Eliot says. He listens to his comms, waiting for a signal. “He’s not a damn dog, you know.”

“Isn’t he?” Chapman asks with a faint smile.

Over the comms, Eliot hears Nate say, “So, about your retirement plan.”

Eliot feels a rush of satisfaction as he says, “You locked him up this morning?”

Utterly oblivious to the fact that his employer’s being arrested and dragged out of the building beside them at this very moment, Chapman gestures at one of the men to apprehend Eliot. “Last night, actually,”

“And when’s the last time you checked that he was still there?” Eliot asks with a grin.

Chapman’s smile drops from his face. “What the hell are you—”

Blood spurts from Chapman’s chest and stomach, and then he’s dropping his gun, staggering backwards. Just as he collapses onto his back, a voice from the balcony above them says, “Remember what I told you about how Alonso died?”

Quinn drops from the balcony onto one of the other men, knocking him down onto the ground. He’s holding a gun with a silencer in one hand, and with the other, he casually steals the baton from the unconscious man beneath him as he stands up. He looks gorgeous in his impeccably-cut suit and immaculately tied hair, a sharp smile on his face as he meets Eliot’s eyes. He nods, and Eliot nods back. For now, it’s enough.

Looking back at Chapman, Quinn says, “He got shot. Just like you.”

“You _bastard_ ,” Chapman snarls.

“Yeah, that’s what he said to me, too.” Quinn looks at the other men, who look uncertain and nervous. “So, who wants to get their ass kicked first?”

Farrow, who’s always been a bit of a ballsy fucker, makes the first move by lunging forward with a knife, and Quinn counters the strike with the baton at the exact same moment Eliot throws himself at the nearest man. 

It’s almost unbelievably easy. Quinn moves in sync with Eliot just as smoothly as he did six years ago, covering Eliot’s blind spots while Eliot moves in tandem with him, dividing up their opponents and knocking them out one by one in quick succession. Eliot had forgotten how seamlessly they could fight together, like an intricate, violent dance, and it makes his blood simmer with a thrill he hasn’t felt for years.

When they’re the last two standing amongst the heap of groaning men, Eliot has to restrain himself from grabbing Quinn and hauling him in for a kiss.

“How did you get out?” Chapman hisses, bleeding sluggishly on the ground as he glares up at Quinn.

Quinn glances at Eliot with a smirk. “I had some help.”

Chapman looks utterly bewildered, which is par for the course. He probably hadn’t expected a fearless blonde thief to break into Moreau’s estate to steal their chief enforcer. Or that said chief enforcer would take very little convincing to join in on the plan to take Moreau down once he’d learned of Moreau’s plans to imprison Eliot and use him as a lifelong bargaining chip. 

“He’ll have both of you killed,” Chapman sneers even as he spits blood.

“I have some bad news for you on that front,” Quinn drawls, unscrewing the silencer from his gun so that he can tuck the former away and holster the latter. “You’re unemployed now.”

Chapman stares at him, disbelief wide in his eyes as he sputters something incoherent, and then he stops breathing entirely. As twisted of him as it might be, Eliot still feels a flicker of satisfaction at that.

“So,” Eliot says after a long silence, “we should probably get out of here before security comes and arrests all these guys.”

Quinn turns to face him, and all his bravado is gone. “Including me.”

Eliot raises both eyebrows. “What—no, you’re not getting arrested. My team is making sure of it.”

“I’ve done things,” Quinn begins, and Eliot cuts him off.

“I know. I’ve been there, too.” He hesitates, because he’s not sure where the line between them really is right now, but he takes a cautious step forward to grasp Quinn’s wrist. “Look, you traded your life for mine, but I never wanted you to do that.”

Quinn averts his eyes. “I know.”

“So this time, do what I want, okay?” Eliot rubs his thumb in a circle on the skin of Quinn’s inner wrist and softens his voice. “Come with me.”

After a shaky inhale, Quinn nods. And when Eliot pulls him towards his freedom, he follows.

-

The rest of the day goes by in a rush. He helps the team with cleanup and personally makes sure that Moreau’s men are locked up in adjacent cells to Moreau himself. He takes a moment to bask in the satisfaction of seeing his former employer behind bars, never to come out again.

“If you wanna go in and break his bones, Hardison can disable the cameras,” he tells Quinn as they face Moreau’s cell.

Quinn thinks about it, and then he shakes his head. “This is good enough for me.”

Eliot frowns, but he doesn’t urge Quinn to rethink that decision. If Quinn thinks Moreau isn’t worth laying a finger on, Eliot won’t be the one to oppose him. And to be honest, he gets it. As much as Eliot wants to break Moreau’s fingers, part of him just wants to get away and leave Moreau in the past. He’s tired of getting blood on his hands because of Moreau, anyway.

So he turns around and walks away, Quinn by his side.

That’s good enough for Eliot, too.

-

When things finally wind down in the evening and the team disperses to rest in their own rooms, Eliot finds himself sitting in the armchair perpendicular to Quinn’s, sharing a six-pack of beers—not the same ones that Sophie brought him the other day, but just as good—as they slowly relearn how to talk to each other without any secrets or lies between them.

It starts off relatively easy. They talk about what they’ve done in the past six years. Eliot talks about the jobs he’s done on his own and then the ones he went on with the team. Quinn tells him about the people he’s killed and the people he didn’t. Then they circle back to the beginning and stick to the good times. The memories they share that don’t dredge up too many emotions. Like _remember the time we went to Nashville and had to hide in a barn?_ Or _remember that time we stole the Dresden Green Diamond?_

Watching Quinn chuckle softly as they reminisce together, his eyes warm and his mouth curving upwards, Eliot feels his chest squeeze tight around his heart. Or maybe it’s the other way around; his heart might be so full that there’s not enough space in his chest. He’d forgotten just how much the cadence of Quinn’s laughter sounds like the best music he’s ever heard.

“I wonder how that couch is doing, back in Vancouver,” Quinn says, mirth brimming in his eyes.

Eliot can’t help the laugh that bursts out of him. “That fucking couch. It better still be in good shape. We spent three whole grand on it.”

“You’re such a stingy motherfucker sometimes.” Quinn shakes his head, grinning. There’s so much fondness in his expression that it makes Eliot ache with longing. “Good to see you haven’t changed.”

“You changed,” Eliot says quietly. “Or, I thought you did. While we were still together.”

The smile on Quinn’s mouth goes crooked. “Well, I did change. You were right about that, you know.”

Eliot still remembers that last night at the docks, trying to comprehend that Quinn was actually letting him go, that Quinn would willingly, cruelly hurt him. He remembers his heart breaking as he looked at Quinn, too blinded by the pain to recognize him at all. _You’ve changed so much._

“My guess is, you didn’t change as much as I thought.” Eliot takes another slow swig of his beer. “It just looked like you changed ‘cause you weren’t telling me shit.”

Quinn’s gaze drops to his lap. He doesn’t say anything.

“What else were you not telling me, back then?” Eliot asks quietly. 

Quinn bites his lip, his grip tightening around the neck of the beer bottle. For a moment, Eliot thinks he isn’t going to give an answer, but then Quinn swallows hard and licks his lips hesitantly. Opens his mouth. “Remember Glasgow? The warehouse near the bridge?”

Eliot remembers. They’d gone there with Gideon to recover goods that were stolen from Damien during transit. It’d been a bloody job. “Yeah.”

“While you were outside,” Quinn says, his voice roughening like he’s having trouble dragging them out of his chest, I found a witness. He was—fuck, I don’t know. He looked like he was barely eighteen. And I just shot him. Never told you about it.”

It’s not a pretty story, but Eliot doesn’t quite understand why Quinn is choosing to confess this particular incident right now. As much as he hates to admit it, killing an innocent kid isn’t anything especially horrifying in the grand scheme of everything they’ve done. “Why didn’t you?”

He half expects something along the lines of Quinn thinking that Eliot would judge him for it, but what he doesn’t expect is Quinn saying, “I killed him because I didn’t want you to be the one who did it.”

Eliot stares. He’s not sure he heard that right. Or rather, he heard it just fine, but he doesn’t understand it at all. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“I know it sounds insane.” Quinn chews on his lip, slouching down in his seat like he wants to sink into the floor. “But after you became chief enforcer, it was your job to make sure people were dead. I knew you hated killing people, and…I didn’t want any of them on your conscience.”

Quinn can’t possibly mean what Eliot thinks he’s saying right now. He _can’t_. “You’re saying that you killed people to keep my hands clean?”

“I guess…” Quinn swallows. “Yeah, that’s what I’m saying.”

Eliot thinks back to every single job they worked together while they were on Damien’s payroll. He thinks of Kavala, where Quinn preemptively volunteered to be the one to stay and kill the man they came for while Eliot evacuated a young girl. Manila, where Quinn killed an embezzler in front of her family before Eliot could even pull out his knife. Nikolai.

“If Damien hadn’t asked me to do it,” Eliot asks slowly, even though he doesn’t want to hear the answer, “would you still have killed Nikolai?”

Quinn hesitates. “I did it so he wouldn’t suffer.” His voice goes quiet when he adds, “But I also did it so you wouldn’t have to.”

Just then, an even worse possibility occurs to Eliot. His whole body goes cold just at the thought of it. “Did you refuse when Nikolai asked us to go on the run with him because of _me_?”

Quinn doesn’t answer, and that tells Eliot everything he needs to know.

“Fuck.” He didn’t think Quinn could break his heart any more thoroughly, but Eliot was wrong. “ _Fuck_.” He has to set his beer down and push himself out of his seat, striding towards the door before he whirls back around. “I never asked you to do any of that!”

“I know you didn’t,” Quinn says, still not meeting Eliot’s eyes.

Eliot wants to snarl. He wants to grab Quinn by the shoulders and shake him. He wants to hold Quinn tight and cry. He doesn’t know what to do and he feels so helpless that it hurts. “I didn’t _want_ you to do any of that.”

Quinn finally raises his gaze to meet Eliot’s. He looks tired and sad and achingly fond. “That’s why I never told you.”

“You always hated it when I tried to protect you.” Eliot can’t help the way his voice grows louder, vehement and miserable. “You never—you selfish son of a bitch, none of those were your choices to make!”

“I’m sorry,” Quinn says softly.

Eliot thinks back to when he’d first looked at Quinn and realized he wanted more than just friendship from him. He recalls the first time they kissed and the first time he pushed Quinn away. He remembers the siren call of desire warring against the terror that he’d inevitably be the destruction of Quinn. 

He’d been right all along.

With a choked, pained sound, Eliot looks down at the floor. “If I’d known I’d ruin your fucking life, I would’ve stayed away from you.”

There’s a clink of a beer bottle against wood, and then Quinn is standing up, walking to him. He reaches out, just shy of grabbing Eliot’s arms, then he falters and pulls his hands back. When Quinn speaks, his voice is firm. “None of this was your fault. You didn’t ruin anything. I’m the one who chose all of this.”

“You did things you didn’t want to do,” Eliot says. “You killed people because of me.” He remembers what Moreau said and feels his stomach twist when he says, “You slept with Moreau because of me.”

Quinn flinches, and Eliot hates it. He hates Moreau for being a manipulative, awful son of a bitch. He hates himself for being Quinn’s damnation. He hates that Quinn ever thought that Eliot was important enough to give himself up for. 

“If it kept you safe, it was worth it.” When Eliot finally looks up to see Quinn’s face, Quinn looks sincere. Like living in hell for six whole years was a price he would gladly pay all over again if it meant Eliot would be okay. 

God, how could loving someone break his heart this much?

“I don’t know if I can forgive you for any of it,” Eliot says. “For lying, or doing shit just to spare me, or not giving me any goddamn choice at all. I know you did it for me, but I just—I can’t.”

Quinn averts his eyes. “That’s okay. I never expected you to.”

There’s a beat of silence where Eliot is trying to figure out how to ask a question that’s been sitting on the tip of his tongue for a while now when Quinn clears his throat.

“I should get going now.”

Eliot blinks at him. “What, right now? To where?” 

“Just,” Quinn shrugs, “somewhere else. I know you probably don’t want me around.”

“The hell?” Eliot scowls. “Just because I’m pissed at you doesn’t mean I want you to fuck off to wherever the hell you think you’re going. Especially when the place you live just got seized by the government, you idiot.”

Quinn shifts on his feet, looking truly uneasy for the first time in the evening. “But…don’t you hate me?”

“That’s what I should be asking.” It’s the question that’s been haunting Eliot ever since he found out the truth. “Don’t you hate me? For being the reason why you’ve been through all this shit?”

“Now you’re the idiot.” Quinn huffs, meeting Eliot’s eyes once more. “If I hated you, I would’ve stopped obeying Damien in a heartbeat.” Uncertainty bleeds back into his face, his shoulders tensing up just the slightest bit. “You didn’t answer my question.”

Eliot sighs. “I hate what you did, but...I don't think I could every really hate you, sweetheart .”

Quinn goes very still. “What?”

“Listen.” Eliot carefully reaches out, not touching Quinn just yet. After knowing that Quinn’s been pressured into sharing his body, he doesn’t dare go any farther without permission. “Whether I forgive you or not—if you want me, you have me. That’s never gonna change.”

“I can’t,” Quinn says, his voice full of desperation, taking a step backwards. “You shouldn’t touch me after—”

“I’ll decide what I should or shouldn’t do,” Eliot interrupts, keeping his voice gentle, as if he might spook Quinn away with the wrong word or wrong tone. “Quinn, sweetheart, tell me what you want.”

Quinn shakes his head. “There’s no way you can want me after all this.”

Something in Eliot’s chest breaks a little at the pain in Quinn’s voice. “Come here.” He stretches his hand up, beckoning to Quinn. “Please.”

After a moment of wavering, Quinn steps forward. Just enough for Eliot’s fingers to graze his cheek, and something in Eliot’s gut settles down at the way Quinn shakily exhales and shivers at the contact.

From there, it’s easy to caress Quinn’s cheek, cupping it and feeling Quinn lean into his palm. Eliot feels his whole heart melt at the gesture, and it’s so easy to say the words: “Don’t you know how much I love you?”

Quinn inhales sharply, straightening up as he stares at Eliot. The reaction doesn’t scare Eliot as much as he thought it would. It’s so stupid, he thinks, that it’s taken him all this time to say the words out loud. They’re still not enough to convey everything that Quinn means to him, but he should’ve said them anyway. Quinn deserved to hear it. He still deserves to. 

“I’ve always been in love with you,” Eliot says, watching the way Quinn looks at him like he’s a revelation. “I still am.”

“Shit,” Quinn blurts, blinking rapidly, and Eliot realizes that he’s crying. Quinn shudders and wipes at his face with his shirtsleeves, his voice shaky as his breath shudders out of him. “Fuck.”

Eliot pulls him in, kissing a tearstained cheek before he presses their foreheads together, anchoring Quinn. “I love you, okay? Don’t ever forget that.”

Quinn shudders through a sob and doesn’t answer him, but Eliot knows that Quinn heard him. They stay like that for a while, Eliot stroking Quinn’s cheek with his thumb and wiping a stray tear away, marveling at the fact that he gets to do this again.

When Quinn’s sniffling subsides into steady breathing again, Eliot murmurs, “Tell me what you want.”

Quinn laughs shakily, and the sound feels like a door opening for Eliot to step through, coming back home. “You. Just you.”

“You have me,” Eliot promises, tilting his head just so that their noses brush. “You’ll always have me.”

With a slow inhale, Quinn frames Eliot’s face with both hands, making sure that their eyes meet, not allowing for either of them to hide or lie. Then he whispers against Eliot’s mouth, “I love you, too. It’s always been you.”

A rush of incandescent joy rushes through Eliot at those words, and then they’re kissing, urgent and desperate, pulling each other in until there’s no space between them at all.

It’s a strange experience to relearn the taste of somebody’s mouth after so long when you used to know it so well. It’s both familiar and foreign at the same time, and Quinn must feel the same, because they spend ages just exploring each other’s mouths, urgency melting into pure heat as they trade slow, wet kisses. 

Once he’s had his fill—not that Eliot could ever get enough of Quinn, but for now—Eliot walks Quinn backward towards the bed, careful to not push him onto it just yet. They kiss a while more before Eliot pulls away and asks, “How do you wanna do this?”

“I want you to fuck me.” The corner of Quinn’s mouth ticks up when Eliot furrows his brow in worry. “Make me forget about him ever touching me, darlin’.”

Eliot can do that. He’s going to make sure of it. “Okay.”

They undress each other in an old, familiar dance that seems to happen purely through muscle memory. As Quinn strips Eliot’s teeshirt off and Eliot unbutton’s Quinn’s, their time apart becomes clearer as they take in the new scars they’ve accumulated over the years. Quinn has a shiny healed burn mark on his inner left forearm that Eliot’s never seen before, and Eliot knows Quinn is taking in the starburst scar left from a gunshot wound he got above his hip a year after leaving San Lorenzo.

They take their time tracing each other’s new scars, fingertips trailing across bare skin as they slowly finish undressing. Once they’re both naked, Eliot has to grab his med kit to dig out condoms and lube, which makes Quinn laugh. It’s a little bittersweet to think that they need to use condoms after all the years they went without them, but neither of them are willing to risk each other.

With the supplies tossed onto the bed, Eliot coaxes Quinn into straddling his lap, reeling him in for more kisses as he runs his hands down Quinn’s back, mapping out the jut of his shoulder blades to the swell of his ass.

“I missed you,” Quinn whispers, looking down at Eliot with a soft smile, errant curls that escaped his ponytail framing his face. The sight steals Eliot’s breath away, and he echoes the sentiment against Quinn’s mouth, sealing it with a kiss so that Quinn can swallow all of Eliot’s years of longing down.

Having Quinn’s body against his feels almost like a dream. It’s a mix of nostalgia and newness, because Quinn is ticklish on his left side and smells faintly of citrus just like six years ago, but the longer curls that Eliot threads his fingers through and the thin line of raised scarring on Quinn’s right thigh are unfamiliar. There’s a keen sense of grief echoing in Eliot’s gut at the tangible proof of all the years they’ve spent apart. All these changes and growths and losses that Quinn’s gone through that Eliot wasn’t there to witness, and he wishes he knew how to catch up on all that lost time. How to make up for all these years where they were separated, unaware of all the feelings they still had for each other.

He can’t even come close to ever recovering that time for the both of them, but he can pour out his whole wretched heart into every touch, every breath they share. He can murmur _I love you, I love you, I love you_ against Quinn’s skin and feel his blood sing every time Quinn says those words back. It doesn’t undo all the lost years between them, but when Quinn whispers Eliot’s name like a prayer and holds him tight, it feels like this could be enough.

“Shit.” Quinn shudders when Eliot rubs at his rim, tensing up in what seems more like pleasure, and Eliot pulls his fingers away with a faint frown.

“Did he…” Fuck, Eliot hates that he even has to ask this. “Did he ever hurt you?”

Quinn blinks at him, taken aback. Then he shakes his head, dropping a quick kiss on Eliot’s cheek as if to reassure him. “No, it was—kind of perfunctory. We only did it a few times, and it was always just a quick fuck.” He huffs, settling down firmly on Eliot’s lap and inching forward so that they’re pressed against each other fully, and the warmth bleeds into Eliot’s skin, soothing the worry away. “He never prepped me, though, so I had to do it myself. Feels weird to have someone else do it for me again.”

Eliot’s mouth twists of its own accord. “Sounds like nobody made you feel good in a long time.”

Quinn doesn’t deny it. Instead, he smiles and says, “You should change that.”

It’s a miracle, now that Eliot thinks about it, how Quinn can still smile and laugh and love. Six years in hell, and somehow it didn’t break Quinn completely. Quinn is one of the strongest people Eliot’s ever known, and Eliot is so fucking lucky to have this man in his life.

“Yeah.” Eliot is going to appreciate Quinn, every gorgeous inch of him, and give Quinn the pleasure and adoration he deserves. “Let me make you feel good, sweetheart.”

He pulls Quinn in for a kiss, and when Quinn shifts in his lap, rubbing his cock against Eliot’s, a spark of heat flickers up Eliot’s spine. Clearly sensing the twitch of Eliot’s dick, Quinn pulls away and raises an eyebrow, the corner of his mouth curling up mischievously. “I can think of a way for you to make me feel good.”

“Maybe later.” With a quick kiss to the upturned corner of Quinn’s mouth, Eliot pushes at his shoulders, urging Quinn to move off of him and lay on his back. “Just let me do the work for now.”

“Gonna spoil me, darlin’?” Quinn teases.

“Only as much as you deserve,” Eliot says, right before he leans down to kiss Quinn achingly slow. Then he pulls away just enough to pepper kisses down from Quinn’s cheek to his jaw to his neck, taking his time sucking dark marks and digging his teeth into Quinn’s skin. Even as he focuses on marking Quinn up, he keeps his hands busy, running them up and down Quinn’s chest and sides, feeling the bumps of ribs and the thump of a heartbeat under his palms. All these things that remind him that Quinn is _here_ , despite all the things they went through and all the time they spent apart. Quinn is still his, and that’s what matters.

He moves onto Quinn’s shoulders, biting into them and then soothing the sting with wet licks, rubbing his hands over the curve of them as he then kisses his way down Quinn’s arm. He traces the scars he encounters along the way with his tongue, listening to the sound of Quinn’s breath hitching at the contact. Once he reaches Quinn’s wrist, he turns it carefully to press an open-mouthed kiss right above Quinn’s pulse point, looking at Quinn’s face while he does so and seeing it flush a dark red.

“You don’t have to,” Quinn mutters as Eliot kisses the back of his hand, rubbing a thumb across Quinn’s knuckles as he hums in acknowledgment of Quinn’s words.

“I want to.” Eliot nips at the tip of Quinn’s index finger. The one that’s pulled the trigger hundreds of times, so many times for Eliot’s sake. “I love your hands. They’re always steady. You’re a hell of a shot, but you’re even better when you stitch me up.”

“You can’t seriously be doing this.” Quinn’s cheeks and ears flush red, and Eliot can see the blush steadily creep down his neck. 

Eliot lets go of Quinn’s right hand and then picks up his left one. “I love your fingers, too.” He bites at the pad of Quinn’s thumb. “They feel so fucking good inside of me.”

“Jesus,” Quinn mutters, unable to look away from Eliot’s eyes.

Eliot keeps going like that, from Quinn’s chest to stomach the insides of his thighs, where he litters bite marks because he knows how sensitive Quinn is there. He narrates the things he loves about each body part, about Quinn, and enjoys the way Quinn squirms, increasingly restless as his cock is neglected while Eliot grazes his teeth across the inside of Quinn’s knee. 

Once Eliot’s kissed the insides of both of Quinn’s ankles—which elicited some full-body shivers and a whine that made Eliot’s blood simmer—and concluded his general exploration of Quinn’s body, he crawls back up to lick into Quinn’s mouth. Quinn kisses him back hard and impatient, hooking an ankle over Eliot’s leg and trying to pull him closer. Eliot groans into the kiss, feeling Quinn’s thigh rub up against his cock. Then he has to break away and sit back on his heels, much to Quinn’s obvious disappointment.

“Stop making that face.” Eliot chuckles and slides down a little, just so his mouth is right above Quinn’s leaking cock. “Just give me a sec.”

He has to stretch his arm to snag a condom, and once he’s grabbed it, he’s quick to tear it open and roll it onto Quinn. When he pumps Quinn’s cock once with a firm grip, he’s promptly rewarded with a loud groan and the sight of Quinn spreading his knees, looking at Eliot with eyes that are nearly black from how wide the pupils are blown.

“I love your cock,” Eliot says, grinning. “I guess you don’t need an explanation for that one.”

He takes Quinn into his mouth after that statement, enjoying the sound of breathless cursing above him while he sucks Quinn off. He takes his time, alternating between licking Quinn’s cock with broad stripes and taking it down his throat. He listens to the sound of Quinn’s breathing get harsher as his body starts to tremble, hips hitching periodically, and when he hears Quinn start to whine low in his throat, he pushes a lubed finger into Quinn’s ass. 

Quinn tenses at the intrusion, but not for long; Eliot sucks him hard enough to make him forget about the finger, and soon Quinn is too distracted by the slow tide of an incoming orgasm to really care about Eliot pushing a second finger into him. The whole process feels familiar and well-worn, even though it’s been years since they’ve done this. Eliot still recognizes every telltale sign of Quinn nearing climax, from the pitch of his voice to the relentless trembling of his limbs, the way he throws his head back and blushes all the way down to his chest. Eliot’s done this so many times, pushing Quinn slowly til he’s on the very edge of release, then letting him fall apart, only to slide his cock right into him while he’s pliant and loose-limbed. It’s like they never stopped doing this together at all.

So after Quinn comes with a shattered moan, clenching around the fingers that Eliot’s pushed inside him, it only feels natural for Eliot to rip a condom packet open with his teeth, rolling it on and lining himself up. He’s been painfully hard for a while now, and it takes all of his self-control not to just fuck right into Quinn and instead wait for him to shakily nod, giving Eliot the go-ahead to push his cock into the snug, warm heat. 

“Fuck.” Eliot shudders, and Quinn clenches around him, making his brain nearly white-out. “Fucking hell, Quinn, go easy on me.”

“You’re the one who’s fucking me right after I came,” Quinn tells him, but there’s no bite in his words. If anything, there’s only exasperated fondness, like he remembers when they used to do this as clearly as Eliot does. When Eliot pulls out and then thrusts back in, Quinn gasps, clutching at the bed sheets while Eliot admires the haphazard curls that are now spread across Quinn’s pillow. 

He fucks Quinn in slow, steady thrusts, reveling in the feeling of getting to claim Quinn once again and drinking in the sight of Quinn’s whole body jerking every time Eliot nails his prostate. After a few minutes, Quinn lets go of the bed sheets and beckons Eliot to lean down so that he’s hovering right above Quinn. 

Then Quinn curls his arms around Eliot’s neck, tugging him in for a quick kiss and a lingering bite to Eliot’s lower lip. “You were too far away.”

When Eliot rocks his hips forward, Quinn clings on tighter, and Eliot feels the cracks in his heart mend themselves, just a little. “God, I fucking love you so much.”

“Sap,” Quinn says breathlessly, but his smile is radiant. He taps his forehead against Eliot’s. “I love you, too.”

Spurred on by the words and by the addictive way Quinn moves his hips in tandem with his own, Eliot feels the pleasure ratchet up his spine, burning through him as he starts rolling his hips faster. He wants to feel Quinn come on his cock first, though, so Eliot reaches down to jerk him off, and Quinn whimpers in oversensitivity. Soon enough, Quinn is clenching down hard, coming with a broken whine, and Eliot follows soon after with a choked groan, biting down onto Quinn’s shoulder one more time. 

It takes them both a couple minutes to get their breath back, and then Eliot pulls out slowly, which elicits another filthy sound from Quinn that has heat pooling in Eliot’s belly again. He’s not in any state to do anything more just yet, but once he’s tied the condom off and thrown it into the waste basket, Quinn grins up at him. “I think I can go again in ten minutes.”

Eliot laughs and leans down for another kiss. “You really haven’t changed as much as I thought.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Quinn says, and Eliot loves even the snark in his tone.

_Still mine_ , Eliot thinks, and presses Quinn into the mattress to kiss him more thoroughly. _Still my Quinn, no matter how much he changes_.

-

“You met my mom?” Quinn asks later in the night, when they’re both sated and sleepy, curled up against each other in the darkness. He doesn’t sound all that shocked, and instead seems mildly fascinated. “So she’s alive after all.”

“She’s been keeping tabs on you.” Eliot doesn’t say he thinks it’s because she loves Quinn or anything like that. That’s not for him to guess. 

Quinn hums, fitting one hand against Eliot’s and knitting their fingers together. Eliot feels a warm satisfaction well up inside him at the casual intimacy. “Doesn’t surprise me, actually. She always liked knowing everything. Hated being caught by off-guard. She taught me to be paranoid as hell.”

“She taught you to be independent.” It’s something Eliot’s been thinking about ever since he met Katherine. “I think I kinda messed that up.”

“That’s not on you,” Quinn reminds him.

“I know, I know.” Eliot sighs. “But I feel like…you lost that. Your independence. After meeting me.”

Quinn is quiet for a moment. Then he raises their joined hands up to press a kiss to Eliot’s knuckles. “I never regretted it. Not for a second.”

Eliot could never bring himself to regret it, either. Even after everything, if he could go back to the beginning, he’d choose to let Quinn follow him to London all over again. “Me neither.” He closes his eyes. “I don’t regret you.”

-

The next morning, while Sophie’s persona is getting her own memorial in Parliament and Eliot is getting ready to head back to Boston with the team, Quinn says to him, “I’m leaving.”

Eliot pauses, his heart crashing against his ribcage. “To where?”

Quinn shrugs. “Somewhere. Anywhere.” He smiles, just a tinge bittersweet. “I thought about it, and you’re right. I kinda…spent so much time having my life revolve around you, and I forgot what it’s like to be my own person.”

Strangely enough, Eliot understands. It’s what he’d felt when he’d first left San Lorenzo. But there’s no desperation or despair in Quinn’s demeanor, probably because he has the reassurance that Eliot will love him wherever he goes. “So you wanna go find out what it’s like to be just Quinn, huh?”

“Yeah, and I think you’ll be fine without me.” Outside the hotel room door, Eliot can hear Hardison and Parker chatting gleefully. Quinn must hear it too, because he tilts his head towards the door and smiles. “I’m not the only thing that counts anymore.”

Eliot smiles back, melancholy and pride simultaneously blooming in his chest. “No, I guess not.”

“I’m thinking about finding something else in my life, too. Something that matters.” Quinn’s smile turns a little hesitant. “And when I do, I’ll come back?”

“You can always come back to me.” Eliot hates the idea of letting Quinn go, just when they’ve managed to find their way back to each other, but he knows this is important to Quinn. Important for them to find an equilibrium where they have more than just each other. Not to mention that he thinks the time apart is what he might need to process his anger, which has taken the backseat for now, but will undoubtedly crop up again soon enough. “Which reminds me…”

Eliot rummages around his duffel bag and finds what he’s looking for soon enough. When he turns around, Quinn’s eyes soften at the sight of metal glinting in the light.

“I think you should take these back,” Eliot says, offering his dog tags to Quinn once more. He’s already wearing his own necklace, the silver pendant resting against his chest, and Quinn’s gaze flickers to it before it returns to the tags in Eliot’s hands. “They’re yours anyway.”

“Thanks.” Quinn accepts the offering and hangs the chain around his neck, looking a little sheepish. “Sorry about, y’know, just throwing them back at you.”

Eliot snorts. “It’s fine. I know you were trying to save my ass or whatever. Just, don’t do that again, okay?”

Quinn rubs the metal between his fingers and nods. “Okay.”

“I’ll miss you,” Eliot says quietly, stepping into Quinn’s space. He wonders how long it’ll take before he sees Quinn again. 

“Yeah,” Quinn murmurs, brushing his lips against Eliot’s cheek. “I’m gonna miss you, too, darlin’.”

After one last kiss, slow and wet and achingly sweet, Quinn turns around and leaves.

-

“You let him leave?!” Parker squawks, sounding offended as he helps her fetch the gold bar-filled trunk out of her room. 

“He’ll come back,” Eliot tells her.

She frowns. “When?”

“No idea.” It could take weeks. Months. Maybe even years. To be honest in a way that Eliot doesn’t want to be, it might be never, if Quinn decides that his new life shouldn’t involve Eliot at all. Whatever the case, Eliot can’t complain. He thinks Quinn’s earned his freedom, and Eliot could never hold that against him. “It’s fine. I can wait.”

Quinn loves him. Quinn knows that Eliot loves him. They’ll always have each other, no matter how far apart they are, and that’s enough to tide Eliot over for the rest of his life.

He can wait.


	3. Chapter 3

Eliot isn’t expecting it at all when his phone rings, its screen lighting up with nothing but an incoming call from an unfamiliar number. He isn’t too keen on answering it right now, because he’s been on edge ever since the team confirmed that Dubenich was the one behind Jimmy Ford’s death. Hell, the whole team has been on edge, with Nate teetering on the brink in a way that feels dangerously familiar to Eliot, ever since the explosion at the warehouse. Eliot’s just returned to his own apartment after an intense, quiet prep session for breaking into Latimer’s office for some recon, so he tenses up when he gets the call, immediately thinking of potential threats and security breaches.

He fishes out his second phone, the one kept strictly for emergencies, ready to text Hardison to tell him to trace the number, and answers the call. “Hello?”

“I hope I didn’t catch you at a bad time,” A familiar voice drawls, and all the tension in Eliot’s body bleeds out.

“Quinn.” Eliot tucks the emergency phone away. He can’t help but relax a little even as his mind flips through the possible reasons for this call. This is the first time they’ve contacted each other ever since they took down Moreau, which was nearly a year ago. “You’re not in trouble, are you?”

Quinn chuckles. “Nothing more than the usual sort.” His humor turns somber quickly soon enough, though. “I should be the one asking you that. I heard about the explosion at the docks.”

Eliot feels his fingertips twitch at the reminder. The horror and fury from that day is still vivid in his mind. He can’t even imagine how much worse it is for Nate. “How much do you know?”

“Jimmy Ford is dead,” Quinn answers. “And I’m guessing that this was done by somebody who has a vendetta against Nathan Ford personally or against your team in general.”

“Probably the whole team.” Eliot gives Quinn a brief rundown on what happened, explaining that Dubenich was the team’s very first mark and that apparently he is working with Latimer. “I’m guessing it was revenge. No idea if he’s gonna keep going or if that’s all he wanted, but we’re going after him either way.”

“He’ll probably expect that.” Over the phone, Eliot can hear the faint sound of rhythmic tapping. It must be Quinn drumming his fingers against something, the way he does when he’s thinking carefully. “If he knows you well enough, he’ll have precautions.”

Eliot sinks back into the cushions of his couch and groans. “Well, he knows our faces and everything, so we’re gonna play it extra careful.”

Quinn hums. “Well, if you ever need an extra hand from somebody who has a face he won’t know, you know how to find me.”

Gratitude blooms in Eliot’s chest, warming him like a blanket draped over his shoulders. He knows that this offer isn’t made lightly, and he appreciates that. “Thanks, sweetheart.”

“You’re welcome, darlin’.” Quinn chuckles. The sound is warm and sweet, like a mouthful of honey, and it makes Eliot’s mouth quirk upwards for the first time since that explosion at the warehouse. “I’d love to talk some more, but I have a job to get to. And I’m betting you could use some rest.”

As much as he wants to keep Quinn on the phone for a little bit longer, Eliot honestly does need some sleep. “I’ll call you later.”

“I’ll look forward to it,” Quinn says quietly. There’s no way you should be able to hear the smile in someone’s voice, but Eliot can hear it right now. It makes Eliot grin up at his ceiling, helpless but to bask in the sound of their shared breathing.

They spend a long moment like that, not saying anything but listening to each other, neither one of them willing to hang up just yet.

Eliot didn’t know that silence could sound like _I missed you_ until now.

-

When the recon attempt falls through and they reconvene at Nate’s apartment, the whole place looks like it belongs to a deranged conspiracy theorist. It’s Nate, though, and what he unravels isn’t a conspiracy, but a very simple truth: Dubenich and Latimer have been profiting off of the team all along, and now it’s time for the team to hit back by going after Latimer’s new, shiny dam.

“This right here,” Nate says, tapping on the map where the dam is located. “This is our job.”

Still, going after the Bellington dam is going to be impossible when Dubenich clearly expects them from every possible angle. They couldn’t even do a simple _recon_. Eliot is just about to say as much when he remembers Quinn’s words. _If you ever need an extra hand from somebody who has a face he won’t know—_

“We need backup,” Eliot says, and everybody looks at him, clearly taken aback. Even Nate looks surprised, if only because he probably didn’t expect Eliot to be the one to suggest this. In fact, Eliot never would’ve thought of it either. He’s not a fan of getting somebody else to do his job. But if there’s anybody he could trust to take his place, there’s no question that it would be Quinn. “Somebody he doesn’t know. Somebody we don’t have any known connections to in the past three years.”

“That’s pretty much every friend we have,” Sophie points out. “Everybody in the game, too.”

“It kinda strikes off everyone we trust right off the list,” Hardison adds.

“Then we find someone who is not a friend.” Nate takes a seat in the middle of where they’ve all settled down, looking at each of them as he speaks. “Someone who's not in the game. Someone we do not trust. That's what we do.”

Eliot isn’t really sure if any of those apply to Quinn. “Basically somebody who Dubenich won’t expect.”

“Aw, hell,” Hardison mutters, clearly already realizing who his best option is.

“First, though, we’re gonna have to clean this place out.” Nate stands up and rubs his hands. “Dubenich is gonna be kicking down the door to this place soon enough, so let’s get moving.”

-

Quinn might’ve been keeping tabs on Eliot during the past year, but Eliot’s been keeping tabs on Quinn, too. He knows what Quinn’s been up to, in general terms. Nothing that would invade Quinn’s privacy too much, but just enough to know if Quinn is getting into the kind of trouble that might need backup. Which regions he goes to and a gist of the work he’s doing. From what Eliot can tell, Quinn’s been bouncing around the world for the most part, taking a whole slew of odd jobs along with way. The jobs seem to be decent ones that don’t involve much carnage; in fact, they seem mostly like package retrievals, like the ones he went on with Eliot in their pre-San Lorenzo days.

Sometimes Eliot wished he were there, too. Having Quinn’s back, walking beside him, fighting together and celebrating after a job well done. Falling into bed together drunk on booze and each other. He missed Quinn sorely, like half of his heart left out the front door and he’s waiting for it to come back home and fill the half-empty cavity inside his chest. 

But other times, he knew it was a good thing that he wasn’t there. Not just because Quinn needed to find his footing as someone separate from Eliot, but because Eliot had to work through his own messy emotions.

Once he’d gotten over the sheer relief of having Quinn free from Moreau and the bliss of having Quinn confirm that he wholeheartedly loved Eliot back, the anger had crept in. Seeping into his bones as he remembered every single damn moment he’d stepped barefoot on the shattered remains of his broken heart, letting the shards dig in, bleeding his grief everywhere as he’d tried to recover from losing Quinn. He’d remembered the words Quinn had flung at him, the ones that haunted him for six years. Telling him that he wasn’t needed anymore, that he was weak, _Palermo_ —

Even though he knew, now, that these had been Quinn’s desperate attempts to protect him, the words had left their scars. The memories had created their nightmares. Quinn made a sacrifice; Eliot could never deny that. But all the years that Quinn spent in hell to protect Eliot still didn’t erase the fact that Eliot had suffered, too. That he’d felt betrayed and hurt and fucking heartbroken beyond belief.

So Eliot had spent days and weeks and months working his way through the resentment and the occasional need to hunt Quinn down just to punch him in the teeth. He loved Quinn through every moment, even at his most furious, but goddammit, he wanted to throttle Quinn for being an idiot sometimes.

Really, the distance was necessary for the both of them.

But Quinn had offered his help, tacitly implying that he was ready to come back if Eliot wanted it. Eliot hadn’t been sure on taking him up on it just yet, because as much as the anger had waned for the most part—thanks to many drinking sessions with Nate and a couple wine nights with Sophie—he still hadn’t been sure whether he could forgive Quinn just yet.

And now it’s time for Eliot to find out, because he needs Quinn’s help. If he can’t forgive Quinn yet after all, then, well. It’s gonna be an interesting week.

-

Given that Eliot’s been keeping tabs on Quinn, it takes him very little time to go track him down to a dirty warehouse in Kiev, surrounded by second-rate Ukrainian mobsters who want to double-cross him. It actually makes Eliot want to laugh, just a little, because clearly these mobsters haven’t realized that their amicable retrieval specialist over there used to be Damien Moreau’s chief enforcer. Most criminals with any sense of international criminal politics would know to run for the hills at Quinn’s name.

“Quinn,” Eliot says in exasperation, walking up towards the group of armed mobsters. He’s wholly unimpressed by the firearms pointed his way. For fuck’s sake, half of them aren’t even gripping the guns properly. “You really didn’t have anything better to do than take jobs from these guys?”

“Eliot,” Quinn says, seeming delighted to see him. Eliot feels his heart stumble a little at the sight of Quinn’s mischievous smile. Damn. He looks good. Not just because of the sharp-cut suit, but because he looks relaxed. Less harrowed. Like he wears his own skin comfortably again. “What brings you all the way here?”

He rolls his eyes. “Was gonna take you up on that offer, but clearly you’re the one who needs some help right now.”

“If you wanna wait for a couple minutes, I can sort this out,” Quinn starts, but Eliot cuts him off by knocking out the two goons closest to him. “Oh, well. You can never resist punching a guy when the opportunity presents itself.”

“Pot.” Eliot raises an eyebrow. “Kettle.”

“Fair enough.” Quinn promptly sends two more goons sprawling onto the floor. “So, how long is the job gonna take?”

Eliot takes a moment to drop another thug just as Quinn does the same. “One week.”

Quinn hums thoughtfully. “Okay, as long as it doesn’t drag out too long.”

“You got somewhere else to be after that?” Eliot asks. Quinn’s never been bothered by how long a job could take. And he knows Quinn doesn’t like lining jobs up consecutively ahead of time, just in case there are complications that could push the timeline back. He’s curious as to what kind of commitment Quinn could have to impose a sort of deadline on a job.

Not to mention that Eliot might be a little disappointed that Quinn would want to take off so soon. He doesn’t let that show, though.

Quinn pauses, then says carefully, “You can come with me, if you have time afterwards.”

The disappointment evaporates. “I’ll think about it.”

Seemingly satisfied with Eliot’s answer, Quinn’s eyes soften. “Alright.” Then his smile sharpens like a knife pressed against a jugular. “Now if we can just get the keys to these pesky handcuffs.”

Eliot turns his gaze towards the last remaining mobster, who swallows hard and takes a step backwards, away from them both.

“You wouldn’t happen to have those keys, would you?” Eliot asks, and the mobster promptly flees, flinging the key at them over his shoulder.

They both catch up to him and kick the guy’s ass anyway.

-

On their flight to Boston, Eliot fills Quinn in on the current situation and how each team member is bringing in their own backup. Quinn seems a little fascinated by the concept of bringing in people who aren’t in the game or even someone they don’t trust.

“I mean, I guess it’s inevitable if you want to get the drop on Dubenich.” Quinn’s voice is low, quiet enough for only Eliot to hear him. “We’re lucky that we didn’t have any contact in the past year, or I’d be off your list, too.”

“Guess it was worth the wait,” Eliot murmurs.

Quinn shifts in his seat, turning so that he can look at Eliot with cautious curiosity. “Was it really enough?”

It’s a question Eliot’s been asking himself ever since he got on a plane to Kiev, and now on the return flight, it’s time for him to give the answer he’s tentatively settled on since he’d laid eyes on Quinn again in that warehouse. “I haven’t forgiven you yet.”

Quinn doesn’t answer for a moment, and the urge to apologize squirms in Eliot’s chest. But Sophie’s voice is very loud and firm in his head, reminding him that he shouldn’t be prioritizing Quinn’s feelings over his own, so he keeps his mouth shut and simply leaves it at that. There’s no point in telling Quinn that he thinks he thinks he’s almost there, olive branch at his fingtertips. There’s no point when Eliot doesn’t know how long it’ll take for him to take that final step. So he offers Quinn the truth at its barest bones and waits.

Then Quinn hums and leans back into his seat. “Okay. I can deal with that.”

Eliot exhales, feeling a tension he hadn’t even been aware of bleed out of him. “So what the hell were you doing in Peru last month?”

“Very smooth,” Quinn says, sounding amused. But he still humors Eliot’s blatant attempt to change the subject, and starts talking. “Okay, so there was this sapphire necklace and a goddamn monkey—”

-

When they arrive at their new, temporary HQ in Boston, Quinn is greeted warmly by a delighted Sophie and rather hastily by a distracted Nate. It’s not exactly the first time the team’s met Quinn, but it’s the first time they’ve interacted beyond the immediate aftermath of Moreau’s arrest, when Quinn and Eliot were still not sure where they stood with each other. Now there’s the time and space for Quinn to really talk to them, and for Eliot to realize, to his muted horror, that he’s somehow accomplished the equivalent of bringing his partner to meet his family. 

“Quinn!” Parker looks ecstatic when she arrives a few hours later, Archie in tow. “Did Eliot steal you?”

“From the clutches of very mediocre mobsters,” Quinn says, and Parker beams at him, then Eliot. It’s like she approves of it, somehow. Eliot doesn’t really get it, but apparently Parker and Quinn had hit it off when she’d helped him escape from Moreau’s estate, and the two of them seem pretty happy to see each other again. Eliot’s never seen Quinn smile that brightly to anybody who wasn’t a mark…except for Nikolai.

“Are you going to stay after this con?” Parker asks. “You should stay. Eliot missed you.”

“Parker!” Eliot hisses.

Quinn laughs, and the sound of it soothes Eliot’s embarrassment away. It’s hard to maintain any kind of irritation when Quinn sounds so unabashedly delighted. “We’ll see how it goes after the job’s done.”

Parker pouts. “Fine.” She points at Eliot, narrowing her eyes at him. “Make sure he stays!”

“I can’t just _make_ him,” Eliot starts, and then gives up on continuing the sentence when Parker obviously stops paying attention to him, distracted by whatever Archie has to say. Clearly, Eliot is fighting a losing battle when it comes to making Parker understand that things aren’t so simple. 

“You sure can’t _make_ me do anything,” Quinn teases, and something about that statement has two different emotions clashing against each other in Eliot’s chest. One is nastier. Darker. Snarls something along the lines of _you really sure about that?_ The other one is brighter. Stronger. Proud of Quinn beyond words. And the latter wins as the former vanishes at the sight of Quinn winking at him. “But I’m willing to be convinced.”

Eliot can’t help but chuckle. “Well, I can think of a way or two to convince you.”

“I can think of a lot more.” Quinn raises an eyebrow. “Like, say, maybe some grilled salmon. Or lobster.”

“You’re just here for the food, aren’t you,” Eliot deadpans.

“Well, I wouldn’t mind it if you stuffed my mouth with something else,” Quinn purrs, showing a side of him that Eliot had missed very much over the years. But also Eliot’s team is only fifteen feet away, so Eliot tackles Quinn down to the ground to shut him up.

“Can you two save it for the bedroom?” Hardison asks in a dry tone after he enters the cave, watching Eliot try to smack a hand over Quinn’s mouth while Quinn squirms under him.

Eliot resolves to make a point of feeding everybody except Hardison for the rest of the week.

“Wow,” Chaos comments snidely and loudly from beside Hardison, “who knew I’d see such kinky gay foreplay in real life?”

Everybody except Hardison and Chaos, Eliot mentally amends.

“So that’s who I’m working with?” Quinn asks in an undertone as he stands back up, brushing the dust off of his suit jacket and pants. “You owe me _so_ much food for this.”

“You’re literally gonna be paid six figures for this,” Eliot points out, though he inwardly concedes the point. There are many less annoying ways to earn six figures that do not involve putting up with Chaos.

“And so much sex,” Quinn hisses under his breath, completely steamrolling over Eliot’s words. 

Eliot restrains himself from kicking Quinn in the shin. “Okay, okay, just stop talking about sex when my team is right here—”

“What are you whispering about?” Parker asks, popping up right behind Quinn, who miraculously doesn’t flinch or jump out of his skin.

“Nothing!” Eliot blurts. “Uh, Quinn said he’s hungry.”

“In a lot of ways,” Quinn drawls, and Eliot doesn’t restrain himself from kicking Quinn in the shin this time. Unfortunately, the kick never connects, because Quinn easily dodges it.

Parker blinks, oblivious. “Oh, okay. Eliot, do your thing.”

“Yeah, Eliot, do your thing.” Quinn smirks. “Make sure I’m stuffed full, will you?”

“I’m gonna break your fucking ribs,” Eliot says through gritted teeth, and Quinn starts to laugh.

-

Prepping for the con is simultaneously easier and harder than Eliot had expected. Easier in the way that Quinn fits in so well with the rest of the team. Hardison’s unrelenting geekiness clearly tests Quinn’s patience, but the two of them still seem to have a mutual respect for each other’s skills. With Sophie, Quinn speaks a certain language that people well-versed in grifting seem to share, easily understanding each other through complicated conversations that feel like dances. And then there’s Parker, who gets along with Quinn like a house on fire. Eliot can’t help but feel a frisson of something warm and content in his chest every time he sees Quinn at ease with the people Eliot considers his family, and a part of him thinks it would be so easy to let Quinn find his place amongst them. 

The harder part, though, is Nate. Obviously, Nate is too fixated on the con and Dubenich to really talk with Quinn beyond what’s necessary for the con, which is not a problem in itself. The problem, though, is that Nate is so fixated on his revenge that Eliot thinks he’s forgetting everyone around him. Forgetting what it’s like to be somebody who has clean hands and a good heart. 

“You’re worried,” Quinn observes the evening before they infiltrate the Bellington Dam. It’s just the two of them in Eliot’s safehouse, sitting on the couch. “You think he’s gonna kill Dubenich.”

Eliot twitches. “You and I both know that killing someone isn’t as hard as people think.” 

“Killing isn’t the hard part,” Quinn agrees. “Living with it afterwards is.”

With a sigh, Eliot sags sideways, leaning against Quinn and resting his head on Quinn’s shoulder. Quinn wordlessly tugs him closer, and Eliot relaxes, inch by inch, into the warm contact. “I can talk to him, maybe, but I don’t think I could really _stop_ him, if that’s what he wants.”

Quinn presses a kiss to Eliot’s hair and says, “Sometimes the best thing you can do is let him make the choice, even if it’s a bad one.”

“Learned your lesson on that one, huh?” Eliot asks, and he’s only a tiny bit sarcastic about it.

“Haven’t tried putting it into practice yet, but yeah, I learned my lesson.” Quinn huffs a breath that almost sounds like a laugh, and his arm tightens around Eliot. “I’m sorry it took me so long.”

Eliot doesn’t tell him that it’s okay. Not yet. “Just gotta hope for the best, huh?”

“Talk to him,” Quinn says, and it’s only because of all they’ve been through, all that Quinn’s done, that Eliot knows to heed these words. Quinn is speaking from experience that scarred both of them, after all. “The way you wish I’d talked to you back then.”

Sharing parts of himself, especially the ugly parts, has never been Eliot’s specialty, but if it’s for Nate, he has to try. He has to. It’s the most he can do.

-

After the Bellington Dam is successfully shut down, and after all of Latimer’s valuables have been stolen for the upcoming phase of the con, Eliot seeks out Nate to have an honest conversation with him. It’s not a long one, but it’s a devastating one anyway.

He’s not sure if the talk was of any help at all, and if he said Nate’s determination to get Dubenich’s blood on his conscience didn’t break his heart a little, he’d be lying.

But when he returns, tired and raw from his own honesty, once more keenly aware of all the jagged edges of himself, Quinn takes one look at him and understands. He strides towards Eliot and pulls him into a tight hug, murmuring _you did your best_ while Eliot holds on, and that’s what keeps his heart from cracking all the way open.

-

But then there’s one window of opportunity. One chance for Eliot to stop this all, and it’s given to him right outside of an airport. He’s just tackled Dubenich onto the ground and knocked out one of his henchmen, and a few feet away from him, Quinn’s holding a gun that he took from the other henchman he knocked out. Nobody else moves.

For a moment, Quinn and Eliot just look at each other. Eliot isn’t sure what Quinn is going to do. Part of him, the part that bitterly refuses to let go of all the choices Quinn made in his stead, expects Quinn to shoot Dubenich here and now. Another part of him thinks Quinn will stow the gun away and urge Eliot back to HQ, the way they’re meant to do after making sure Sophie was safe.

What he didn’t expect is Quinn tossing him the gun.

Once the gun is in his hand, Eliot instinctively knows what he wants to do. He wants to save Nate. He wants to do what he can, because his own hands were dirtied a long time ago, and it won’t be much of an addition to his conscience if he gets Dubenich’s blood on them, too. Sure, the team will be horrified, and maybe even disappointed in him. Nate will be furious. But Eliot would rather take all of that as his burden rather than let Nate be the one to lose a piece of himself.

So he aims the gun at Dubenich.

“What are you doing?” Sophie asks. “What are you doing?”

“I’m thinking about saving my friend some trouble,” Eliot says, and he knows he just might lose Sophie’s faith in him for this. He still can’t put the gun down, tough, even if his hand is shaking so hard that he’s not sure if he could make it a clean shot. Even if he loses his team’s trust, even if Nate never forgives him for it, at least he’ll have Quinn to have his back. Quinn will understand. Quinn—

— _gave him the gun._

Quinn didn’t make Eliot’s choice for him. He didn’t kill or spare Dubenich for Eliot. He’d merely given Eliot the gun. Even if it meant that Eliot might do something he’d regret, he’d let Eliot make his own choice anyway.

And that’s what Eliot had wanted. It’s what he’d deserved, and it’s what Nate deserved, too. To not have his choice taken away from him.

That thought is what convinces Eliot to lower the gun, clicking the safety back on. Then Sophie is shaking her head, obviously displeased but not irreversibly so, walking away while Eliot and Quinn start to follow her. Almost automatically, Eliot starts disarming the gun, and Quinn says, “Hell, next time, give me the gun. I’m your Huckleberry.”

His tone is joking, but Eliot knows it’s a serious offer. Quinn would gladly kill if Eliot asked him to. He knows that.

But also, this is Quinn saying that he won’t kill for Eliot unless Eliot asks him to.

“Here.” Eliot hands Quinn the disarmed gun.

Quinn huffs and tucks it away into the back of his pants. “A little late now.”

“Tombstone?” The memories of when Eliot first showed the movie to Quinn flicker through his mind. It was a long time ago. They’d watched it a couple more times over the years, but Eliot hasn’t watched it since he left Moreau. “Haven’t heard that line in ages.”

“I re-watched it a couple months ago,” Quinn explains with a grin. “And I mean it, darlin’.”

Eliot chuckles, the sensation of the gun in his hands fading fast. “I know you do.”

And watching Quinn smile Eliot’s heart squeezes with a newfound hope. A thought that he had wanted to mean but failed to believe in until just now. _I think can forgive you_.

-

Latimer is drugged and temporarily sent to what he believes is the Cayman Islands, Dubenich’s accounts are drained and dumped into the team’s account, and ultimately Dubenich and Latimer drag each other to their downfall with Nate never pulling the trigger.

All in all, it’s a resounding success, and Eliot is so relieved he’s dizzy from it.

“You sticking around?” He asks Quinn as the team agrees to disperse for a few months, just to stay low and keep law enforcement off their trail after the very public sharing of all the jobs they’d been involved in. Eliot thinks he’s ready to follow Quinn wherever he goes, but he has something in mind, first.

“Well, for maybe until after dinner, but I really should get going after that.” Quinn gives him an unreadable look. The kind he deliberately chooses to wear when he’s not sure where he stands with somebody else. “You wanna join me?”

Eliot feels a trickle of relief course through his blood at the concrete invitation. “Yeah, that’d be nice.” He clears his throat. “I was thinking we could do something before we go.”

Quinn gives him a very blatant onceover. “I mean, that’s fine, but the bed in your safehouse sucks.”

“Fuck you.” Eliot rolls his eyes. “And I was thinking of something different.”

“Like?” Quinn prods.

“Sparring.” Eliot resists the urge to cross his arms and opts for hooking his thumbs into his belt loops, keeping his posture open and relaxed. “Been a while since we did that.”

Quinn blinks, clearly taken aback by the suggestion, but he recovers in a heartbeat. “Sure, why not.”

Which is how they end up in a local gym, where Eliot’s bribed the owner to let them have the place to themselves for an hour. Just the two of them, circling each other on the mats as they analyze each other for weaknesses, brings back memories of the days they used to do this years ago. Those memories had been tainted, ever since Eliot had his heart broken and stumbled away from the years he’d spent with Quinn by his side, and recalling them had been a knife to his gut every time. 

Now, though, the memories have shedded the pain. Instead, they’re tinged with nostalgia and a muted sense of the fierce joy he’d felt whenever he’d knocked Quinn onto his ass, or when Quinn had wrestled him down and pinned him against the mats. They don’t hurt to think of anymore, and that, more than anything else, gives Eliot the push to make the first move and go for a strong left hook to the jaw, followed by a knee to the gut. Quinn deflects both blows, though he gets hit in the ribs by the knee. As a counter attack, Quinn goes in for quick jabs, which are effective against dazed opponent, but not so much to a completely clear-minded Eliot.

They trade blows and counter-attacks like that for a while, landing some hits but not enough for either of them to gain a significant advantage over the other, right up until Eliot manages to catch Quinn by surprise with a perfect shoulder toss, throwing him onto the mat and pinning him there with his hips, keeping Quinn down with a forearm pressed against his neck.

“You’ve gotten faster,” Eliot notes. Quinn’s always been quick, but it seems like he’s only improved in that area.

“And you’re still infuriatingly hard to keep down,” Quinn replies.

Eliot leans down, tapping his forehead against Quinn’s. Here, after leaving bruises all over Quinn’s body and having Quinn’s blows still making his muscles ache, Quinn warm against him, he thinks that the weight of the anger is gone. Sure, there’ll probably embers of it that flare up once in a while, but for now, the fire is out. Now, Eliot can say the words out loud and mean them wholeheartedly.

“I forgive you.”

Quinn freezes, eyes wide as he stares up at Eliot. He doesn’t ask Eliot to repeat himself, or to confirm what he just said. He simply looks at Eliot like he’s a goddamn miracle, and Eliot knows that they’re going to be okay, now.

“I might still get pissed off about sometimes,” Eliot admits. “But it doesn’t change the fact that I forgive you. For all of it.”

“That’s, uh.” Quinn swallows, looking thunderstruck and hesitant and hopeful all at once. “A lot better than I expected, to be honest.”

Eliot snorts in amusement. “What did you expect?” 

“I don’t know, maybe a lot of shouting. You punching my teeth out.” Quinn averts his eyes, sounding a little sheepish when he adds, “Telling me to fuck off and never come back.”

“Guess I can’t blame you for thinking of worst case scenarios.” Eliot’s had his fair share haunt him in the quietest moments. “I wasn’t sure you’d come back.”

Quinn chuckles, his voice a little shaky. “I wasn’t sure about it either, at first.”

Weirdly enough, that’s reassuring to hear. There’s a certain amount of comfort in knowing that Quinn didn’t walk away with an answer already decided in his head. “Well, it’s up to you if you wanna stay.”

“I actually kinda need to talk with you about that,” Quinn says. “But I want it to wait til I take you to my place. So, you can move off of me, now.”

“Yeah, okay.” Eliot tilts his head so that his lips brush against Quinn when he says, “I wanna stay just a little more.”

Quinn laughs, his breath hot against Eliot’s mouth. “Sure, just a bit more.”

They close the distance between them at the same time, meeting each other halfway in a slow, sweet kiss. After that, when Eliot pulls away, ready to help Quinn to his feet, Quinn pulls him back down for another one.

They don’t have sex—Eliot is firmly against fucking in public spaces, even if nobody else is around—but they almost miss their flight anyway.

-

They go to Copenhagen, where Quinn apparently keeps a small condo just around the corner from the center of the city. Eliot and Quinn have been to the city together once for only an afternoon, ages ago for a job that took them across Scandinavia, so there aren’t many shared memories here. Quinn certainly never had a safehouse here before, so it’s a new place. The perfect spot to build a life wholly separate from Eliot’s.

And Quinn’s built one, even if it’s still sparse. There’s a small collection of novels on a shelf in the living room. A handful of odd magnets on the refrigerator that represent different parts of the world, like whimsical souvenirs. There’s an expensive coffee maker with three mugs lined up beside it, each one with a different coffee pun ( _He’s Just Not That Into Brew_ , one of them says, and Eliot chokes back a laugh). The furniture blends in with the sleek interior seamlessly in a way that makes Eliot think that Quinn didn’t pick them out, but there’s a thick, soft throw blanket draped across the couch. It’s a shade of maroon that’s a burst of color in the otherwise white and charcoal color scheme of the place, and Eliot knows that this was something Quinn chose.

On that very throw blanket, nestled comfortably and staring at Eliot, is a small calico cat.

“You have a cat,” Eliot says, very eloquently.

“Her name is Berry,” Quinn says, just as the cat scampers off the couch and hides under it. “Oh, uh, she’s not great with strangers.”

“So this is why you needed to come back quickly,” Eliot realizes aloud.

Quinn gets on his knees in front of the couch, peering under it as he tries to coax his cat back out. “Yeah, well, Kirsten—uh, my neighbor—comes by and makes sure she’s fed and stuff when I’m gone for longer jobs, but I don’t want her to get lonely.”

“You gave your neighbor a key?” The idea that a hitter would willingly let someone into their own space unsupervised is bewildering. Doubly so because it’s Quinn, who’s paranoid as hell.

“I did run five background checks on her first,” Quinn admits, still crouched on the floor, beckoning to the cat. “But Kirsten’s clean. She’s a nineteen-year-old lesbian who studies physics and lives with two cats. Makes some really good carrot cake, too. She lives two doors down.”

“So, she’s your friend?” Eliot asks. He’s never seen Quinn make a civilian friend before. Not that Eliot has any of those, either, but to be fair, he’s only ever seen Quinn make only one other friend outside of Eliot. 

“I guess so, yeah.” Quinn sighs and reaches under the couch. “C’mon, Berry. Say hi to Eliot.”

Something belatedly clicks in Eliot’s brain. “Did you name your cat after _Huckleberry Finn_?”

“I re-watched _Tombstone_ right after I found her.” Quinn sounds only a little defensive about it “And it’s a nice name.”

Eliot has to begrudgingly admit that it’s a cute name. Especially when Quinn finally pulls an unresisting Berry out so she can curl up in his arms, staring with wide green eyes at Eliot. She’s adorable.

“How’d you find her?” Eliot asks, holding a finger close to Berry’s face so she can sniff at it curiously. She soon turns her head away, uninterested. 

“Found her during a job. Her mother and the rest of the litter had frozen to death, so I brought her to the vet.” Quinn shrugs and scratches Berry behind her ears, and Eliot can hear the small, steady sound of her purring. “Then I just kinda brought her here.”

Here, with an armful of cat in a place that seems almost like a home, dressed in a suit smudged with cat hair and a loosened tie, Quinn looks happy. Like he’s found his footing and figured out a life without Eliot, and something a lot like relief mixed with sorrow creeps into Eliot’s heart at the sight.

“So, y’know, I have Berry and all,” Quinn says, and Eliot’s chest squeezes tight around his ribcage. “I wanted to ask if…that’s okay with you.”

“Okay with what?” Eliot asks.

“Moving in with you,” Quinn says, and Eliot stops breathing. Quinn notices the reaction and immediately adds, “You don’t have to say yes. I can just find a place nearby yours or work something else out.”

Eliot finally remembers how to breathe. “You wanna stay with me? Leave all this behind?”

“I mean, I can bring my stuff. There isn’t a whole lot of them.” Quinn pauses. “Berry is definitely coming with me, though.”

“What about your friend?” Eliot asks weakly.

“I can always text her, it’s not a big deal.” Quinn tilts his head, looking intently at Eliot as if he’s seeing right through him. “I know I’ve got a life here, and it works just fine for me, but I’ve done a lot of thinking. Talked with my mom about it, too.”

Eliot blinks. “You talked to her?”

“We call each other once in a while. Mostly just texting here and there. It’s not bad.” Quinn clears his throat. “Anyway, my point is that I’ve figured out that you’re what I want. I want a life with you.”

If Quinn had said this a year ago, Eliot wouldn’t have been able to trust those words. But now, Quinn’s spent all this time finding other options, learning what it’s like to experience and enjoy a life without Eliot, and Quinn’s made the active decision to come back to him. He’s choosing Eliot, not because he needs to, but because he wants to. 

“Of course you can move in with me,” Eliot says. “Or, actually, we should get a new place, since mine’s too small and I don’t think pets are allowed. But yeah, I want you in my life, too.”

Quinn beams at him, wide and happy, and when he steps towards Eliot to close the distance between them, Berry jumps out of his arms and flees back to under the couch. Neither of them heed her, though, because they’re too busy kissing, pulling each other in and holding on tight. Eliot swallows the sound of Quinn’s laughter down and feels so damn lucky that Quinn chose to stay with him once again. He doesn’t know if he deserves Quinn’s whole fucking heart, but he thinks that he’d like to keep it anyway.

“C’mon,” Eliot whispers against Quinn’s mouth, tugging him by his belt, and Quinn gets the message soon enough. They stumble their way into the bedroom, trading kisses as they go, and Eliot makes sure to close the door firmly behind them, because he’d rather not have a cat come inside to interrupt them. “Condoms?”

“Lower drawer,” Quinn says, pointing at the bedside table. Eliot grabs half a dozen of them and the lube, making Quinn’s eyebrows go up. “Jesus, how many rounds are you planning on?”

“I owe you so much sex, remember?” Eliot teases.

It takes Quinn a moment to catch on. “ Oh my god.” He starts laughing. “Yeah, you really, really do.”

Smothering a chuckle against Quinn’s neck, Eliot starts kissing his way down Quinn’s skin, undressing him as he goes, and Quinn is quick to get his hands on Eliot’s sweater and tug on it, too. Once they’re sufficiently naked, Quinn pushes Eliot onto the bed, pressing him down against the mattress and kissing him wet and slow, grinding their hips together while Eliot threads his fingers through Quinn’s curls, fisting them tight enough to make Quinn groan heatedly.

They move like that together, rocking their hips and grinding against each other, chasing the pleasure, feeling the tension mount in their guts as they take their time raveling each other apart. It’s indulgent as hell, having Quinn panting against his mouth, rolling his hips in a mouthwateringly smooth motion, feeling his cock rub up against Eliot’s just right. 

Quinn comes first, whining low in his throat as his hips stutter, spurting come all over their lower bellies with a full-body shudder. It’s hot as hell in a way that makes heat flare in Eliot’s gut, and he rocks his hips up against Quinn’s softening dick just to feel Quinn shiver on top of him. When Quinn wraps a hand around Eliot’s cock and pumps it tight and rough, Eliot is so close to the precipice that it takes him only twenty more seconds to come with a shattered groan, too. 

Once he gets his breath back, Eliot pushes off the bed with one arm, flipping them over so that Quinn’s underneath him.

“Remember the Maldives?” Eliot asks, and Quinn blushes hard, which is a sufficient answer. “Wanna find out if we can break that record?”

“I don’t think we’re young enough to do that.” Quinn grins up at him anyway, because he never could resist a challenge. Eliot is ridiculously fond of that fact, just like he’s ridiculously fond of Quinn in general. “But let’s try.”

-

They don’t break the record, but they get pretty damn close.

-

It turns out that Eliot does need to get a new place after all, because the team is relocating to Portland. He and Quinn go apartment hunting together, bickering about it in a way that reminds Eliot of when they’d first moved to Brooklyn. They finally settle on a modest apartment a few blocks from the brewpub that Hardison’s bought. There’s a fantastically equipped kitchen and enough space for Berry to dash around, with no direct sightlines into the place, so it’s perfect. 

Living with Quinn again is like relearning how to walk after a long period of being bedridden. It’s shaky and occasionally frustrating but also breathtakingly wonderful. They remember each other’s old habits and quickly learn the few new ones they’ve gained while they were apart. Their are fitted together slowly but surely, like how Quinn cooks dinner when Eliot’s tired, or how Berry learns to finally curl up on Eliot’s lap. They develop a routine, making space for each other, and Eliot’s so glad to be home again after all these years.

The team is happy to meet Quinn again, this time not as an ally, but as Eliot’s partner. Quinn is quickly invited to spend time with them in the brewpub, where Hardison keeps asking for funny stories about Eliot while Parker trades notes with Quinn on different ways to break into secure facilities. Sophie insists on going shopping with Quinn, because clearly he’s the only one who has an eye for fashion, and Nate, who is no longer fixated on revenge, pours Quinn a drink and asks him to lend a hand from time to time for the team’s cons.

Quinn says yes without hesitation, and Eliot watches the most important people in his life all together, eating dinner and chatting and laughing. It’s a miracle that he’s somehow managed to have this, despite all the things he’s done, but somehow he’s earned these people, this family, and it’s like watching the morning creep in, sunlight brightening the sky as the darkness fades away.

He’s made it through the night, and now it’s the dawn of the best life he could ever ask for.

-

It happens during a con.

Quinn and Eliot are dancing in a ballroom for a charity gala, and they’re waltzing across the floor, hearing the team’s impressed voices through the comms.

“It’s so much easier when we have you, Quinn,” Sophie says, and Eliot rolls his eyes at how obvious she is.

Originally, when they’d moved to Portland, Quinn had remained a freelancer, taking on his own jobs and occasionally helping the team out if they needed an extra hand. But over time, Quinn’s been brought in more and more often, and the number of jobs Quinn takes on his own have been slowly, steadily dwindling. 

It’s been inevitable for a long while now, and the whole team’s been waiting, and Quinn’s been waiting, and Eliot thinks it’s about time that they finally make things official.

“Join the team, Quinn,” he says, between one step and another, just as the sound of violins sing sweetly across the room.

Quinn doesn’t miss a beat, still moving in tandem with Eliot as they dance. “If you’re sure about it—”

“Of course we’re sure!” Parker interrupts, and then the rest of the team is adding their own two cents, all talking over each other, and Eliot has to hide a grin against Quinn’s shoulder at the sheer enthusiasm.

“Then yes, I’d be honored to,” Quinn says, and Hardison whoops through the comms.

It’s only after the con—which ended with a smashing success (literally; they had to smash three whole statues for it)—and the team is sharing drinks to celebrate when Quinn whispers in Eliot’s ear, “Guess I’m part of your family now.”

“They’re yours, too,” Eliot says, because it’s true. The team is now just as much as Quinn’s as it is Eliot’s, and he’s immeasurably glad about it. Quinn deserves a family. He deserves more than just Eliot.

Quinn’s eyes soften. “I guess they are.”

Eliot doesn’t feel that tinge of melancholy at the thought that Quinn doesn’t belong only to him anymore. It’s not just the two of them against the world anymore, and that’s okay.

-

“I thought we were gonna get a day off,” Quinn groans as they walk up to the brewpub in the early afternoon. They’d finished a con only two days ago, and usually Nate allows them more cool-off time before they start prepping for the next one. “What’s so urgent that he needs us at HQ right away?”

“We’ll find out when we get there,” Eliot says with a shrug.

The brewpub is closed for the day, which makes Quinn pause in confusion, his hand on the door handle. “The hell?”

Eliot nudges Quinn’s elbow. “Are you gonna go in or not?” 

“Hardison didn’t say it’d be closed today,” Quinn mutters, pulling out his key and unlocking the front door.

Just as they step in, all the lights turn on.

“So we heard,” Nate says from where he’s standing behind the bar with the rest of the team, “that it’s somebody’s birthday today.”

On the bar, there’s a veritable feast: more than a dozen plates full of Quinn’s favorite foods, and in the very middle on a raised plate, there’s a carefully garnished blueberry cheesecake. 

Quinn gapes, then turns his head towards Eliot. “When the hell did you have time to do this?’

“Yesterday when Sophie took you shopping, and then today morning.” It helped that Quinn hadn’t suspected Eliot of anything, and had assumed that Eliot was heading out for his usual morning rounds through the farmers’ market. 

“I didn’t know we did birthdays around here,” Quinn says, turning back towards the team. 

Hardison grins. “It was usually only mine, and we started doing Parker’s when she decided her birthday two years ago, but we figured we could do yours too.” He pauses. “If you want.”

Eliot watches Quinn carefully. They’ve always celebrated Quinn’s birthdays, right until his twenty-sixth, the last one before Eliot left San Lorenzo. He’s not sure if Quinn celebrates them anymore. If Kavala has left such an ugly stain that the day has been tainted for him, much like how Eliot’s birthday has become something he can’t enjoy.

So Eliot hadn’t been sure about going ahead with this. He’d been deliberating over something smaller, something quieter with just the two of them, but Parker had stolen his phone as a joke and seen the note on the calendar, and she’d insisted on at least trying to give Quinn a birthday feast, just this once.

“Well, I think I definitely want a bite of that pasta,” Quinn says with a smile blooming on his face, and that’s enough for Sophie to break out the wine and Hardison to start passing out the plates.

Once everybody’s full and lazy and maybe a little tipsy,Quinn helps Eliot load the plates into the dishwasher before he presses a quick kiss to Eliot’s lips. “Thank you, darlin’.”

“We can do this again next year,” Eliot tells him. “But only if you want to.”

A corner of Quinn’s mouth quirks up. “I thought I’d never do a birthday ever again, since, well. You know.”

“I know,” Eliot says softly.

“But I think I want to.” Quinn takes Eliot’s hand, knitting their fingers together as he looks Eliot in the eye. “I want to celebrate with you guys.”

Eliot kisses him, brief and chaste. “Whatever you want, sweetheart.”

Quinn hums in contentment. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” Eliot says, grinning helplessly against Quinn’s mouth, letting his eyes flutter closed when Quinn kisses him again.

“Okay, we should probably get back out there before Hardison thinks we’re making out back here,” Quinn finally says with a grin, and Eliot snorts. They walk back out of the kitchen to where the rest of the team is waiting for them, hands still joined together.

As they settle back in at their seats with the team and raise another toast, Eliot marvels at the fact that Quinn is now thirty-four. Fifteen years older than when they met for the very first time. It’s been a long time for them, both together and apart, and Eliot looks forward to many more years. Many more birthdays together, with this family of theirs.

It’s taken them fifteen years, but Eliot finally thinks this is where the rest of their lives begin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To everybody who stuck with this story until the very end, thank you.

**Author's Note:**

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